


Bitter Tasted Candy

by OwenToDawn



Series: Hold My Body, Hold My Breath [3]
Category: AOMG, Show Me the Money (Korea TV), korean hip hop
Genre: Break Up, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, Healthy Relationships, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Platonic Cuddling, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Wonjae Is Still Single At The End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:34:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28130976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwenToDawn/pseuds/OwenToDawn
Summary: Asking for help is difficult, but like any muscle, it gets easier with practice
Relationships: Woo Wonjae & Park Jaebeom | Jay Park, Woo Wonjae/Choi Jeong-sik | Black Nine, Woo Wonjae/Jung Kiseok | Simon D
Series: Hold My Body, Hold My Breath [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035810
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Bitter Tasted Candy

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Welcome to my labor of love, this fic that I have been thinking about since I published Resentment Blossomed Flowers and that the end result is not anything I was originally planning. This was supposed to be a Wonjae/Jaebeom fic. And yet here we are, with...not that. But don't worry, there's a part 4 I am part way through writing
> 
> I hope if you read this, you like it. I know this fic isn't going to draw a ton of attention tag wise so if you click on this and read it, thank you! I'm proud of how this turned out. Any comments or kudos are greatly appreciated
> 
> Title is from Small Red Boy by AJJ. And is also the line that comes after "Resentment Blossomed Flowers" which I thought was fitting

**_Part One_**

****

**_Afraid that even your thorny interest_ **

**_Might be love, I hold myself back_ **

**_Afraid that even your words filled with laughter_ **

**_Might be temporary, I look away laughing_ **

**_Hey when you come in, close the door fast_ **

**_Don’t want my words to slip out_ **

**_-Mirror by Black Nine feat. Woo Wonjae_ **

A hand yanks at his hair. Lips press to his throat and he shudders and shakes on the inside but nothing makes its way past his skin. Fingers skim along the top of his jeans. Lower. And then it all goes away as his partner pulls back.

“You aren’t…”

Wonjae swallows his shame and slides along the club wall and vanishes down the nearest hallway, out the backdoor and into the alley. He hears it lock behind him and leans back against the brick wall. He’s not entirely sure what he expected. The doctor had been honest about the side effects of his anti-depressants. There’s a chance they’ll go away after the first few weeks, but for now the temporary comfort that came with hooking up isn’t even an option.

Not that sleeping his way through the student body of his university was really a solution in the first place. He knows that. It’s fleeting, the feeling of being seen, the feeling of for once not being alone, and when the other person leaves, they take those feelings with them. But it had been _something_ for him to distract himself with.

He pulls his phone out, debating if it was worth buying a ride back to his apartment. His messages blink up at him, reminding him of the messages he’d ignored from Gray because he still couldn’t wrap his mind around Gray wanting to talk to _him_ of all people. Did he not see the rot inside of him like everyone else?

_Gray: Hey, I meant what I said. You’d be good at making music. I’m pretty sure we could do something cool together (Sent 7:08 PM)_

_No pressure though (Sent 9:14 PM)_

He spends money he doesn’t have and buys a cab home.

_Wonjae: alright. When should we meet (Sent 11:48 PM)_

-.-

Wonjae spills his secrets out in his lyrics because there’s nowhere else for them to go. They poison that curdles in him has been bursting at the seams for too long, seeping out his pores and tainting everything around him. But in a song, in a performance, it’s like bloodletting. Every song he writes, every performance he gives, leaves him feeling a little less damaged. The people who listen to his music think they know everything about him, but they don’t realize the thing they think is so courageous is just weakness. That’s all it ever has been.

-.-

He’s always thought the phrase ‘real recognizes real’ was dumb. He still does, really, because it’s a phrase people use to pump themselves up past their actual significance, but maybe that’s just the pretentious side of him talking. He thinks he might get it now because when he meets Tiger JK’s gaze in a gymnasium full of people trying to achieve their dreams, he finally sees it.

Instead of his rap, he almost says something else entirely.

The sentence loops in his head through his delivery of his lyrics and as he clutches the necklace Tiger JK hands him afterwards with a smile. It beats the inside of his skull as he tries to answer the questions a bored intern asks him about his thoughts. He doesn’t remember what he says. All he can think about is that Tiger JK has it too. The thing that bites at his insides. Or at the very least, he knows that it exists.

He thinks maybe something will come of this. Even if nothing does, the comfort that finally someone has actually looked at him and seen him is enough to make the dark feeling in his ribs recede.

-.-

Everyone compares him and Ignito to each other. The demon and the devil. Except it’s a joke to everyone, and he knows how many of them see him as overly dramatic when he’s just being honest. Mostly. They’re performers, so all of it is somewhat of a lie but he isn’t saying anything untrue in his lyrics. He wants it to not bother him. He wants it to not matter. But it bugs him, and it eats away at the parts of his mind that sometimes try to convince him that he’s not all twisted up and corrupted and broken and-

“You wanna take a smoke break?” Ignito asks.

Wonjae looks up from where he’s staring down at the way his own fingers pick and peel at the tape covering his tattoos to see Ignito looking down at him. His mic is already gone. He’s probably finished up his interviews for round two, which means Wonjae is probably going soon, but he should be able to sneak a break. He nods and gets to his feet, clicking off his mic before following Ignito out the back.

Ignito passes him a cigarette and then reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out a lighter, the snap of it flicking on making Wonjae jerk back in surprise before leaning forward to take the light. Ignito lights his own up next and then pockets the lighter. His lips quirk up in a smirk as he exhales his first drag.

“What, did you think I was going to snap my fingers and light it up like a magician?” he asks.

The joke blindsides Wonjae enough that it startles a laugh out of him, the kind he always hates because he feels like it doesn’t match his face and the smile that comes with it always looks too large and out of place on camera. It stretches his lips and it feels foreign. He’s only stopped smiling so often in the last few years, but it already feels like it isn’t something he does on a regular basis.

“Sorry,” Wonjae says.

“It’s fine. And it’s Chaegi, by the way. My name,” he says. “Out here, when there’s no cameras, Chaegi is fine.”

Wonjae inhales smoke and breathes it out through his nose a few seconds later. “Ignito is just a persona, but does it bug you? People calling you like…the devil and shit?”

Chaegi shakes his head and lets his hand dangle by his side as he taps off the ash onto the cement. “Nah. They can think what they want about me. I’ve been around long enough to not let it phase me. It bothers you though, doesn’t it?”

“That obvious?”

“No, you don’t have to worry about that,” Chaegi says. “In there, everyone will just write you off as an angst-ridden teenager that takes himself too seriously. You expose yourself to them and they laugh because they don’t know how else to handle what your words make them feel.” He sucks on his cigarette again and lets the smoke out as continues. “The people that stay quiet? Those are the ones who care, but there’s not many who want to hear that sort of emotional shit.”

"Speaking from experience?”

“Not my own,” Chaegi says. He takes another deep inhale of his cigarette and blows the smoke skyward. “You’ll be fine if you don’t take yourself so seriously.”

“Fine? You don’t even know me,” Wonjae says, a short and disbelieving laugh escaping him.

“You spit all that shit about what’s going on in your head up on stage and you’re really going to try and say I don’t know you?” Chaegi asks. He doesn’t sound hostile though, just…curious.

Wonjae shakes his head. “That’s just a part of me.”

“You don’t believe that.”

And yeah. Yeah. Chaegi is right about that. More than anything, he hopes he amounts to more than the dark things he claws out of his gut and leaves in the air when he speaks. He remembers the moments as a child when he waited for it to go away. Waited for the curdling and toxic feeling to abate and then each year passed, and it just grew and grew until he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there anymore. He thinks of his mom saying she feels she never really knew him the first time she heard his lyrics.

“Does it go away?” Wonjae asks. _The part everyone thinks is wrong._

 _"_ Hm?” Chaegi frowns as he flicks the burning stub of a cigarette onto the ground and grinds it under his boot.

He looks at Chaegi and he doesn’t see what he saw when he looked at Tiger JK. Chaegi doesn’t have the same feeling they do, Wonjae can tell just looking in his eyes. Maybe on the surface, people think they’re alike, but to Wonjae, the difference between them is stark, so obvious it hurts because it hammers on the nerve that reminds him he’s alone.

“Never mind. Thanks for the smoke.”

Chaegi grins. “Yeah man.”

-.-

Jeong-sik is like him. It’s clear after the first team meeting that they are, so when Jeong-sik asks him to come work on lyrics together at his place, Wonjae accepts. Tiger JK watches them leave together with a wide smile. From anyone else, it might have seemed patronizing, but Wonjae likes that Tiger JK has put together a band of misfits that don’t seem quite like what people want or expect. He likes that someone cares enough to try and make him feel less wrong.

Jeong-sik’s bedroom is neat. It’s easy to sink into a beanbag chair in the corner and pull out his journal and start to write as he listens to the part of the track meant for his lyrics. Whenever he pauses the music to think, he can hear Jeong-sik’s pen scratching from where he sits at his desk. It’s a new feeling. He doesn’t usually like writing his lyrics or working on music with people around him, only ever really doing it out of necessity or when he’s working with someone else on purpose. He and Jeong-sik aren’t really working together, they’re just sharing a space.

It’s soothing.

The advantage of being so honest about the worst parts of himself are that when people hang around him, he knows it’s because they like him. Well, mostly. Some people just want to figure out what’s wrong with him, poking and prodding and gawking and generally making him feel like a mistake. But people like Gray, or Sunghwa as he insists Wonjae call him these days…people like those in his crew back at university. They just like being around him. This moment in time with Jeong-sik feels like that.

“Can you look this over for me?”

Jeong-sik’s voice startles him out of his thoughts and he pulls his headphones off and holds his hand out as Jeong-sik passes him his journal. Almost on instinct, he hands his own in return. When Jeong-sik tries to pull it away, he finds his grip won’t loosen and for a moment they stare at each other and Wonjae feels his throat go tight. He feels like he’s looking in a mirror.

“Sorry,” Wonjae says and let’s go.

“I don’t have to look,” Jeong-sik says, voice soft.

“You’re going to hear it eventually,” Wonjae says. “It’s fine.”

Jeong-sik nods and returns to his desk and Wonjae turns his attention to Jeong-sik’s lyrics. He starts the song track over to listen to what Jeong-sik would be rapping over. He murmurs the words under his breath, stopping here and there to add his own thoughts and suggestions about areas that don’t sound smooth. So entranced in the process is he that he doesn’t notice Jeong-sik isn’t doing the same to his own.

When he finally looks up, he sees Jeong-sik staring down at the journal, his knuckles gone white from how hard he’s clinging to it. For a moment, Wonjae considers just pretending he hasn’t seen anything. But he doesn’t…want to walk away. The thought of leaving Jeong-sik swimming in emotions alone that he knows very well himself makes his stomach clench uncomfortably, so he pulls his headsets off and sets them aside before standing up.

He steps up beside Jeong-sik and with a careful hand, pries the journal from his hands. The curling metal spine of the journal has left deep marks against his palm and Wonjae swallows hard as he sets the journal aside and Jeong-sik drops his hands to his lap as they curl into fists.

“I don’t get how you’re that honest,” Jeong-sik says, gaze rooted to his lap. “Aren’t you afraid of them looking at you like…like you’re…”

“Wrong and broken?” Wonjae leans against Jeong-sik’s desk, arms folding across his chest. “They’re going to look at me like that anyways. I can’t hide it anymore. The only way to make them stop looking at me like that is if I pretend I’m happy and I haven’t been able to do that in a while. I’m too tired.”

It’s more honest than he usually is with people. Other people, he prefers to clam up. There’s nothing he can tell them outside his lyrics that will make them really understand him, and most the time they don’t actually care. Jeong-sik cares though. He can tell from the look in his eyes and the way he holds himself now. He cares because he understands. In an odd way, Wonjae feels like the whole conversation is some weird exercise in learning how to be gentle with himself. He wants…he wants to be gentle with Jeong-sik. Why not himself?

“I am too,” Jeong-sik says, and his voice is so quiet Wonjae can barely hear him. “I’m tired of pretending too.”

"You don’t have to pretend around me,” Wonjae says, and he finds he means it. He wants more than anything for Jeong-sik to not feel as damaged as he does, and maybe he can’t fix whatever Jeong-sik is going through, but he can at least make him feel less alone.

“Thanks,” Jeong-sik says, and he swipes the back of his hand over his eyes before sniffing and shaking his hands out as he looks up. Wonjae can’t even tell he was crying. “So uh…my lyrics?”

Wonjae knows a desperate attempt to change the conversation topic when he hears it. Vulnerability is hard. It’s like a muscle, Wonjae thinks, and it’s one Jeong-sik probably hasn’t used in a long fucking time.

“Yeah, I have a few ideas,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

-.-

Being around Jeong-sik is odd. Wonjae can’t stop himself from comparing the two of them, especially the more Jeong-sik opens up to him in the time they spend together outside taping. Every conversation is like training Jeong-sik to be vulnerable and it feels…nice. To be that. To create that space for him to try and be vulnerable, and the way he can see Jeong-sik’s relief every time Wonjae accepts him as he is…it makes him hate himself a little less.

He feels a little less wrong.

When Tiger JK and Bizzy pick him over Jeong-sik during the mic selection round, it takes everything in him to pull himself out of Jeong-sik’s arms and head up the stairs. It makes him want to bow out of the whole competition. It makes him want to give everything to Jeong-sik, the need to make sure he feels loved and understood almost choking him. It’s only because of the genuine happiness he sees that Jeong-sik has for him despite his sadness for himself that he’s able to actually get up on stage.

He’s the one that invites Jeong-sik over this time. More than anything he needs sleep after such a grueling night and performance, but when he stumbles his way towards the entrance of his apartment building as the sun begins to rise, he’s relieved to see Jeong-sik waiting for him. He looks just as tired, his eyes bloodshot from crying. His clothing from before has changed though, dressed in track pants and a red t-shirt that has a hole in the bottom left seam. They lean into each other as Wonjae opens the door and leads him upstairs to his tiny studio. Namu and Ami don’t stir from their beds, only glancing up at them coolly before curling back up where they lay.

"I don’t know why I’m here,” Jeong-sik says as they both kick their shoes off. “But I am.”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Wonjae says, looking up at him. “So, thanks.”

Jeong-sik nods and Wonjae can feel the heat of his body and he thinks maybe this is about to turn into something and he craves it, from somewhere deep he hasn’t felt anything from in over a year. But he also feels sticky with dried sweat and his skin itches under the tape that covers his tattoos. He leans further into Jeong-sik, enough that he can see Jeong-sik’s eyes widen with the realization of what he Wonjae wants followed by a look that feels hungry.

“I gotta shower first,” Wonjae says, voice rough and aching in his throat. “I…”

“It’s fine. I’ll be here.”

Wonjae swallows hard and drags himself to his small bathroom. The water pressure sucks and keeps switching to cold as he showers and scrapes the tape off and leaves it in a mess on the edge of his sink. As he rinses, he finds himself scratching at his chest and arms. It’s almost habit, something he developed at some point as a way to force the emotional turmoil into temporary submission. He forces himself to stop this time. There’s something better he can do to sooth the tension. Something other than harming himself or mindless sex or drowning his thoughts out with music so loud it makes his ears ring.

He towels off and pulls on a pair of loose sweats before heading back into the living room. Jeong-sik is curled on his side on his bed. Something warm unfurls in his chest as he crawls onto the bed and presses himself close. Jeong-sik startles awake and then…relaxes. The feel of it, the feel of someone relaxing against him, trusting him, breaks something wide open in his chest and he wraps an arm right around Jeong-sik’s abdomen as he rests his forehead against the back of his neck. It’s relief, hot and sharp and it feels better than performing ever has. If a performance is ripping himself open to drain out the poison, this, this feeling is having that wound close up and heal.

He’s not different, he’s not wrong. He can hold someone and bring them comfort. He can be held and be comforted.

“I think I’m a little bit in love with you,” he murmurs, low and a little too unsteady.

“I’m a little bit in love with you too,” Jeong-sik says, his fingers curling through Wonjae’s where they lay against his stomach. “But I think…I think it’s just because we both got to meet someone who makes us feel like we’re not messed up.”

“Yeah,” Wonjae says.

He agrees but he presses his lips against Jeong-sik’s neck anyways. He agrees but he closes his eyes and focuses on how Jeong-sik’s breathing sounds when he does it again. He agrees but his heart pounds as Jeong-sik clings tighter to his hand.

Jeong-sik turns in his arms and his hands come up to frame Wonjae’s face. The look in his eyes make Wonjae feel like he’s drowning and he wonders if this is how other people walk around every day, feeling seen and exposed and cherished anyways. He leans forward and presses his lips to Wonjae’s forehead.

“Thank you,” Jeong-sik says against his skin.

When they kiss, their lips pressing together dry and warm, Wonjae feels like a puppet with its strings cut. They roll into each other, their kisses as slow and tired as they feel, the hunger from earlier a low rumble that grows as they continue to touch. Jeong-sik’s fingers trace over his bare abdomen and Wonjae shudders. He gasps against his lips as arousal washes through him in a slow wave, then lets out an embarrassing whimper as Jeong-sik slips his fingers just below the waistband of his sweats. He’s not hard yet, but he feels like maybe he will this time. It’s been so long since his meds have let his body react like this – but maybe he just hasn’t felt like this before.

There’s a part of his brain, noisy but getting quieter, that clamors that he should warn Jeong-sik that this might not go the way he wants it to. Why warn him though? If anyone would understand, it’d be the person on the same issues.

Besides, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a problem. Jeong-sik shifts to press his lips to Wonjae’s throat and he remembers how in the past, not so long ago even, he craved for someone to bite down and tear through the haze that so often settles over his mind. This feels better. The wet heat of his lips, his tongue, it has him grasping at Jeong-sik’s neck and arching towards him. A firm hand wraps around his cock and he chokes on his breath, eyes going wide as tears of all things gather at the edges. He’s not even sure why. He’s not upset. He’s happy, content, exhausted, aching. He’s so many things, all of them overwhelming and yet he drinks them all in because he wants to feel it all.

“Fuck, fuck, how are you so-“

Wonjae doesn’t know how Jeong-sik’s sentence ends. He’s too busy trying to breathe as he comes, hands grasping as Jeong-sik’s shirt and back and neck as his body tenses and then begins to tremble. Jeong-sik presses their lips together again and that of all things is what helps him breathe again. His nerves sing in the aftermath of his orgasm, and he feels high, or how he thinks being high would feel, everything feeling like too much as he presses into Jeong-sik and kisses him over and over until his lips feel bruised.

“I want, I want to…” Wonjae’s hands push at Jeong-sik’s track pants.

In the end, he ends up between Jeong-sik’s thighs, bobbing his head up and down with a slow and wet suction that has Jeong-sik gasping out his name, fingers pushing through Wonjae’s hair as he does it. He can’t remember sex ever feeling this. He can’t remember it ever feeling like something he wanted to go on forever, like every place his skin touched someone else’s felt pleasurable, arousing, heady. The weight of Jeong-sik’s cock on his tongue makes his stomach feel warm and his pulse feel slow.

Everything about it is like a rolling haze of pleasure that settles over them both, and he feels nothing but indulgent contentment when Jeong-sik comes choking on his name. For a long time, he stays right there. He tucks Jeong-sik’s cock back in his pants and rests his head on Jeong-sik’s hip, reveling in the small shivers that race down his neck and spine as Jeong-sik’s fingers push through his hair and rub at his scalp. The sun rises far enough to scatter sunlight across his back and as it warms them both, the cats begin to stir and meander towards the kitchen.

“We can’t date,” Jeong-sik says, his voice barely a sigh.

"I know,” Wonjae says. He turns his head and presses a kiss to Jeong-sik’s hip, looking up the long length of his body and drinking in his fill of the way Jeong-sik stares at him. He wants to memorize it. He wants to hold it close enough that he can remember it when he feels overwhelmed by the noxious feelings that fill him up far too often.

“I hope we can at least stay friends,” Jeong-sik says.

Wonjae shifts to rest his chin against Jeong-sik’s hip. “We will. I…”

_I wish I could carve out a space in you and stay there forever. I wish you could carve out a space in me and never let anyone else in. I wish I could stay right here where I’m known and seen and loved anyways. I wish you could stay right here, where I will know and see and love you._

He doesn’t say any of it but from the way Jeong-sik looks at him, he thinks his point gets across. And he knows, deep down, that the thoughts and desires are just born of profound loneliness and now that he’s finally been offered the thing he’s craved his whole life, he wants to consume it and be consumed by it. It’s not healthy. It’s not good. As nice as this moment feels, he knows if he stays and drowns himself in it, it’s just a recipe for the sort of codependency that eats people alive.

“I hope one day we’re both happy,” Wonjae says instead. He means it more than the traitorous and desperate thoughts that lurk deeper in his chest.

"Maybe we can try it again then,” Jeong-sik says.

And maybe they will. Either way, Wonjae is just grateful for his friendship and the memory of a sun-soaked morning that he’ll be able to cling to in the future.

-.-

Distance over the next week helps cool the fire. It’s odd, the way he ended up so wrapped up in someone else, but it hammers home how disastrous a relationship would have been if they’d pursued it. Codependency like that isn’t sustainable. Still, preparing for his next stage without Jeong-sik’s feedback feels a little lonelier, even if he does have his friends and his mentors to help him along.

_Sunghwa_ : _I hear you’re doing all the producing yourself this round (Sent 1:04 AM)_

_Make sure you sleep too!! (Sent 1:07 AM)_

_Wonjae: Speak for yourself (Sent 2:19 AM)_

Seonghwa sends a laughing emoji in response and Wonjae shuts his phone off before turning back to his computer. He wants everything to perfect. He needs it to be perfect.

He shows the finished project to Tiger JK and Bizzy and once he secures the collaboration with YDG and Suran both, he sends the lyrics to Jeong-sik to look over against his better judgment. His heart races with the desperation to be validated. It confirms to him how important it is for them to remain apart until he can get his own heart back under control.

_Jeong-sik: The part about being young but people treating you like you’re somehow stronger than you are (Sent 11:34 PM)_

_I feel like that’s what it’s like to pretend I’m okay (Sent 11:34 PM)_

_Wonjae: Whether we hide it or show it, it makes people think we’re capable of enduring anything. They don’t get what it really means (Sent 11:35 PM)_

_Jeong-sik: I get it (Sent 12:09 AM)_

When the time comes to perform in the semi-finals, he finds himself feeling sick to his stomach, but that’s not exactly surprising. He’s always been honest when performing, but this song, this thing he’s created from the ground up all on his own to perform in front of the biggest audience he’s ever had, terrifies him. He wants to convey his thoughts. He wants to convey how desperately people like him, like Jeong-sik, long to be accepted and comforted instead of shunned, and he wants to convey what it’s like to have the moments of darkness punctuated by the bright moments of that very acceptance and comfort.

But he knows it will leave him feeling shattered at the same time. He thinks there is something to what Jeong-sik says about him being brave enough to get up on stage and expose all his vulnerabilities. Before, it felt less like bravery and more like weakness. He couldn’t be strong enough to hold a mask up and pretend he was okay. His only choice _was_ to be vulnerable. This performance…this performance feels like the bravery Jeong-sik claims he has. He feels as though for the first time, he is choosing to be weak and hoping that the audience before him will hold space for him the way Jeong-sik had.

Just like the last performance, the moment he’s off stage it takes everything in him to actually stumble back towards the dressing rooms. He collects his congratulations from Tiger JK and Bizzy, gives the producers the footage they want, and then unhooks his mic with shaky hands, leaving it on the counter before ducking back out and looking for somewhere else to catch his breath. He finds an empty dressing room a few doors away and slides down to the floor once the door is shut firmly behind him.

Not for the first time, he wishes he had someone to soothe the ache such vulnerability had left in him. The validation and cheers from the audience had helped. Now that he’s alone again though, with their cheers far away, he finds himself wanting what he had that morning with Jeong-sik. The intimacy of one person letting him know with just his eyes that he understood. It makes him feel greedy that acceptance from a large audience isn’t enough to comfort him. He’d gotten what he’d wanted and yet found himself desperate for more. Perhaps that was what was required to heal.

If he hoarded the good feelings for long enough, maybe he could drain out the last of whatever it is that makes him broken and heal himself up for good. That’s what he wants more than anything. The audience supporting him, the morning with Jeong-sik, they soothed an immediate hurt, but he wants something that fixes him forever, even though he knows something like that doesn’t exist. He knows it’s a process. And he knows every performance, every time he’s heard and accepted, is a step along that road.

It’s hard to hold onto that though when he’s sweaty and tired and shaking.

Once he’s regained some semblance of composure, he pushes himself upright and opens the dressing room door. There’s no production crew with a camera waiting for him, thank fuck, but he stops short when he sees Jay Park of all people standing there. It’s not totally surprising. The eliminated producer teams won’t be on any filming, but they still have been around for rehearsals and performances.

Before he can say anything, Jay steps forward, head tilting to the side as he studies Wonjae’s face. Wonjae searches and scrabbles desperately for the energy to cover up whatever expression or emotion must be in his eyes, but in the end he just ends up staring back at him, unable to find the energy to hide. Jay grabs his hand and Wonjae swallows. The interaction only gets stranger as Jay raises his hand to his lips and then, with a gentleness that reminds him far too much of Jeong-sik’s lips on his throat, he kisses the back of it.

It’s the strangest thing. Somehow, the touch of his lips and the look in his eyes lights something up in him more than the screaming audience had. Distantly, he’s aware that he’s never really ever spoken to Jay, and that they haven’t spoken at all since he opened the dressing room door, and it sets off some sort of alarm that things aren’t quite right. Perhaps he’s trapped in some sort of dream after falling asleep in the dressing room.

Jay lets go of his hand and after another long moment of staring in his eyes, walks away. Wonjae blinks and then inhales. It takes another moment for him to regain his composure enough to walk back towards the dressing room he shares with the producers, and even hours after filming, he’s still not entirely sure his interaction with Jay had even been real. It isn’t until he gets a text from Sunghwa that it sinks in.

_Sunghwa: lmao dude what did you say to Jay? He’s been fucking losing it for the last few hours talking about you (Sent 12:20 AM)_

_Wonjae: I didn’t say anything (Sent 12:21 AM)_

He hadn’t said a word, but he had looked at Wonjae as if he’d been listening anyways.

-.-

Show Me The Money ends with him as a runner-up. He gets an offer to sign with AOMG and collaborate on a song with Jeong-sik on the same day. He lies on his bed with Namu cradled to his chest and fights the urge to scroll through social media and spends way too much time reading comments about himself. As soon as the offer from AOMG had come, he’d texted Sunghwa, asking if it was him pulling strings. Sunghwa had just told him to meet with Jay, _Jaebeom_.

So he’d texted Jeong-sik instead just for a distraction and gotten a song offer in response. He thinks it would make sense to reach out to Tiger JK and maybe join his label the way Jeong-sik had, because he can’t imagine how in the fuck he could fit in at AOMG of all places. Why would Jaebeom invite him to…taint everything there? But no, he knows he can’t think like that.

It’s hard though. The thoughts refuse to ever just die, constantly creeping in and rearing their head when he least expects it. He thinks he’s doing better since he finally got to express himself in such an honest and open way and have the majority of people like him anyways. Such validation isn’t a cure but it’s something for him to point to when the dark part of him tries to lie.

Still. It doesn’t make sense. Woo Wonjae and AOMG exist in two separate realms of reality and Wonjae doesn’t know if he could take a rejection like that.

In the end he goes to Jeong-sik’s place. They sit on Jeong-sik’s bed together, Wonjae resting his head on Jeong-sik’s stomach as he writes in the journal he braces against his thighs while Jeong-sik taps away his own ideas on his phone. Every once in a while, his hand drops down and he brushes a thumb against Wonjae’s temple. It takes everything in him not to curl into Jeong-sik’s weight and turn this into something it’s not.

“Jay Park asked me to sign to his label,” Wonjae says.

 _Afraid that even your thorny interest might be love, I hold myself back_ , his lyrics say back at him.

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

They write the rest of the afternoon, send their rough drafts off to Tiger JK for review, and against Wonjae’s better judgment, he finds himself in Jeong-sik’s bed again. They don’t fuck, but he lets Jeong-sik hold him while he whispers out his fears against the hollow of Jeong-sik’s throat. He rips himself open and lets Jeong-sik hold him until he can put himself back together.

-.-

He finishes creating Mirror with Jeong-sik and they schedule it for release towards the end of October in a month. He flies to Japan to be alone with his thoughts, and when he gets back, Sunghwa is waiting for him with Jaebeom and Soohyuk.

A few hours later, he sits down at a restaurant dinner table across from Park Jaebeom and pretends he knows what wine goes well with fish before he remembers he shouldn’t drink after he’s just readjusted his meds again. He watches the waitress pour it into his glass before setting it in the bucket of ice water and leaving their table.

Jaebeom had offered him dinner as a way to speak about any of his concerns, which had been great in theory but now that he’s here, he can’t help but be painfully aware that the only real interaction they’d had before now was Jaebeom kissing his hand in a dark hallway. The dinner and discussion have been nerve wracking enough to consider without the memory of their last interaction.

“Sunghwa said you had concerns,” Jaebeom says. He reaches out and grabs his wine glass before leaning back in his chair and sipping at it.

They’re in a private booth, the prying eyes and eavesdroppers kept away by a long hallway and curtains. Wonjae finds himself desperately wishing for the noise so he could focus on something else to soothe the anxiety rolling inside him, but instead he’s trapped either looking at the table or meeting Jaebeom’s eyes. If it were after a performance it’d be easier. His desperation for validation would make it possible to meet his eyes without a struggle. Now, in the quiet, with just two of them, with no adrenaline or emotional distress taking control of him, he fears looking in Jaebeom’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Wonjae says after a too long moment. He looks at his glass of wine. “I can’t drink right now.”

It’s not what he means to say and he sort of wants the ground to swallow him whole and perhaps never let him emerge ever again. There’s a beat of silence. He expects a laugh. It’s like Chaegi had said months ago. Most people didn’t know what to do with raw vulnerability, with people who deviated from the unspoken social rules and codes, so they’d laugh. But now that he thinks about it, he can’t remember a time Jaebeom has ever laughed at him, and even now despite his odd response, Jaebeom doesn’t laugh.

“Sorry, I should’ve asked,” Jaebeom says.

The cool response helps soothe some of his nerves. He takes a deep breath and makes himself look up, meeting Jaebeom’s steady gaze with his own. “I don’t know why you want me to sign to your label and it makes it hard to take the offer seriously.”

“Do you think I offered as a joke?” Jaebeom asks, frowning as he leans forward and Wonjae hates looking in his eyes.

He hates that he can’t tell what Jaebeom is thinking at all. He’s gotten used to the different ways people look at him, positive and negative, but with Jaebeom, there’s nothing but an incredible feeling as though he’s being seen. He just…doesn’t know what it is that Jaebeom is seeing.

“Not a joke,” Wonjae says with a shake of his head. “More…more like you offered out of pity.”

“It’s not,” Jaebeom says. “I don’t pity you at all. I think you’re-“

“Don’t.”

Wonjae doesn’t even realize he’s spoken until Jaebeom freezes and then leans back in his chair, head tilting to the side. He takes a breath, realizing he can’t just leave it there.

“Don’t say I’m brave. Or strong,” he says.

Jaebeom looks at him, eyes flicking all over his face and Wonjae resists the urge to just get up and leave. It’s too painful. He doesn’t want to wait and figure out what it is that’s the final straw that pushes Jaebeom over the edge and realize he’s made a mistake.

“Okay, I can understand that,” Jaebeom says. “It makes you feel like people don’t understand you doesn’t it?”

Wonjae swallows, mouth and throat both feeling dry. “Yeah that’s…that’s exactly it. It makes it sound like it’s a given that I can handle what’s going on in my head and it’s not. It’s never been a given. Being honest…” He stops, unsure of why he’s spilling all this out but maybe he should so Jaebeom actually knows what he’s getting himself into. “Being honest isn’t something I do because I’m brave or strong. I just don’t have the strength to hide it anymore. That’s all.” It may have been different the night of the Zinza performance, but Wonjae knows it’s still mostly true.

Silence stretches between them and this time, Wonjae can’t hold Jaebeom’s gaze so he drops it instead to the table where his fingers are playing with the edge of one of the cloth napkins.

“It’s weird how I look at you and see something entirely different from what you see when you look at yourself,” Jaebeom says.

“You can’t honestly tell me you don’t think I’m messed up,” Wonjae says.

“I didn’t say that,” Jaebeom says. “I just don’t see someone who’s given up. Giving up on being fake isn’t weakness. I won’t argue the point with you because I don’t want to argue with you about how you feel about yourself. But I am not offering you a contract because I pity you, or because I want to fix you, or because I think you’re brave or strong or whatever other words you hate. I offered you a contract because I want you to keep making music. It does something for you, doesn’t it? Performing, I mean.”

Wonjae nods. “Yeah.”

“I saw it that night,” Jaebeom says. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to put a mask back on. I want you to make the music that helps you and I want to see what you turn into.”

“Why though?”

Wonjae looks back up and it’s the first time he’s seen Jaebeom look off balanced, as if he’s afraid of saying his own answer out loud.

“I think…” Jaebeom shakes his head, but Wonjae doesn’t think the gesture is meant for him. “I think I want to know what that’s like. I want to know what it’s like to produce something and create something so honest and truthful and showing all of that even if you are afraid.”

“What, are you taking notes?” Wonjae asks, and he can feel something like a smirk tugging at his own lips.

“Maybe I am,” Jaebeom says. There isn’t a hint of laughter in his voice.

Chaegi’s words circle around over and over in Wonjae’s head. He’s given Jaebeom every excuse to move on, given him every opportunity to show that he can’t handle the heaviness that has itself weighted in Wonjae’s chest. But Jaebeom has turned away. And he hasn’t laughed.

“Okay. I’ll sign with you.”

-.-

Wonjae isn’t sure what it is about him, but apparently, he’s a magnet for people like himself. Within one meeting, Simon Dominic goes from well…Simon Dominic, to Kiseok, and from that it turns into…something. There’s something about having all of Jung Kiseok’s attention focused in on him that’s addicting. He asks him questions, stares intently at him when he answers, and his responses reveal he’s paying even closer attention than it seems.

He releases his first single album a few days after signing and finds himself at Kiseok’s home with Hyukwoo and Sunghwa for a small celebration. It’s nice. It feels like a welcoming party even with just four of them, and it’s easy to relax with Hyukwoo and Sunghwa around. He’s already used to their presence so letting go is easy, and it’s simple to laugh and smile in a way that feels real instead of hiding. He feels Kiseok’s stare on him the whole evening though, and he can’t tell if he likes it or hates it.

In the strangest way, it feels like Kiseok is desperate to be in his space but holds himself back.

“Newly signed and you’ve already charted once before you even got here, and now you have three songs under your belt,” Sunghwa says as he sprawls out on the floor in front of Kiseok’s couch. He plays with an empty bottle of soju in his hands. “Our skilled newbie!”

“I already had those songs made,” Wonjae says. “It’s not like I wrote them in a few days or something.”

“Did you read the reviews?” Kiseok asks.

Wonjae shakes his head. “Nah. I already know what they’re gonna say.”

“ _This isn’t like We Are_ ,” Hyukwoo whines out as he nearly stumbles over Seonghwa’s leg’s on his way to the kitchen.

“ _Why did AOMG sign him and not me, my vibe is so much better,_ ” Sunghwa adds, wheezing as he starts to laugh.

“ _1/5 stars, didn’t mention his mom,”_ Wonjae says as he begins to giggle at the memory of the diss battle from only a few months ago.

Hyukwoo dissolves into giggles of his own in the kitchen as he starts searching through Kiseok’s fridge. Wonjae’s phone pings and he tugs it out of his pocket.

_Jeong-sik: Ahhh, it sounds so good. I’ve been listening to both tracks all day (Sent 11:57 PM)_

_I wish I could see you (Sent 11:57 PM)_

_You’re probably smiling (Sent 11:57 PM)_

The texts alone bring a smile to Wonjae’s lips and he slips the phone back in his pocket as he stands and then digs around in his other pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. “You got a porch or something I can smoke on?”

“Yeah,” Kiseok says, jerking his chin towards the other end of the living room.

Wonjae dodges Sunghwa’s attempt to trip him and heads out onto the porch, breathing in the city air as he slides the door shut behind him. He lights a cigarette first, placing it between his lips as he pulls out his phone and pulls up his messages with Jeong-sik. The smoke rises up before his eyes as he rereads them. He hits the call button instead of texting back.

“Mmm?” Jeong-sik’s voice is deep in his ear and Wonjae listens to the sound of his sheets move as he shifts in bed. “You staying up late?”

“Small celebratory party, that’s all,” Wonjae says. “Got some air. Wanted to talk to you.”

He doesn’t need to say that he always wants to talk to Jeong-sik these days. That’s kind of the problem. Jeong-sik hums out a noise and Wonjae listens to Jeong-sik make another strange groaning noise as he likely stretches.

“Did you miss me?” Jeong-sik asks.

“Yes,” Wonjae says. “It’s…Sunghwa and Hyukwoo are good friends, but they aren’t like you.”

“Yeah?” He can hear Jeong-sik blushing just from his tone.

Wonjae bows his head and inhales smoke again, closing his eyes and just listening to Jeong-sik breathe. He aches all over to be held. He wishes he were healthier and Jeong-sik was too. He wishes they could be together.

“It’s okay,” Jeong-sik says to a question he doesn’t ask. “I’m right here.”

Wonjae nods even though Jeong-sik can’t see him. They stay on the phone together until the sick feeling that had risen up in his chest fades away again so they can actually talk. Jeong-sik asks him about his cats and Wonjae tells him he’s thinking of getting another. He tells Jeong-sik that he spoke to a famous tattoo artist and has a plan for a neck and shoulder piece that he’s going to spend some of the money from Mirror on.

“I’m going to think about us every time I see it now,” Jeong-sik says with a laugh.

“Good,” Wonjae says, his own laugh feeling light in his chest. “Thanks for reaching out tonight.”

“Yeah. I’m glad we got to talk,” Jeong-sik says. “But shouldn’t you be talking to your new label-mates?”

“Mmm, I guess,” Wonjae says. He thinks about the sleeping morning where he had kissed Jeong-sik’s hip as the early sunlight of dawn streamed through his windows. “I…”

He bites off the rest of the sentence and wishes Jeong-sik a good night. He hears the affection in Jeong-sik’s voice when he returns the wish, and he thinks maybe he hears the words he’s bitten off too. The feelings sit between them, obvious and familiar, but never to be indulged. Still, the conversation helps. He likes that any time he speaks to Jeong-sik, it feels like coming home, like the mask has slid off but he isn’t scared of being exposed.

When he steps back into the living room, he’s still smiling. Kiseok notices immediately, eyebrows raising as he studies Wonjae’s face as he sits back down on the couch.

“Talking to a girlfriend?” Kiseok asks.

“Nah,” Wonjae says.

He flops down on the couch and accepts the glass of water Hyukwoo passes him on his way back to his own seat. Kiseok nudges Wonjae’s legs until he draws them up enough that he can take a seat on the edge of the couch himself, a teasing smile on his lips that doesn’t seem to meet his eyes.

“That’s the girlfriend smile, it’s like when Hyukwoo talks about Hwasa,” Kiseok says.

Hyukwoo makes a noise close to a squawk as he begins to choke on his water and cough as Sunghwa dissolves into laughter, hand clutching at his stomach as Hyukwoo’s face goes bright red. Wonjae rolls his eyes and then-

“He’s not a girl.”

He throws the words down like a challenge as he looks as Kiseok. Jeong-sik and he might not be dating, and they might never be anything, but that’s a matter of circumstance not unrequited feelings. He knows Hyukwoo and Sunghwa already know. It hasn’t been anyone else’s business who he chooses to date, but he’d rather not get teased about girlfriends he’ll never have. Kiseok raises his soju bottle to his lips and drains the last of it.

“Well then,” Kiseok says after a moment. “So it was a boyfriend?”

“An ex,” Wonjae says because that’s the best description he can think of.

“You smile like that about an ex?” Sunghwa asks.

Wonjae glances down at him. “Yeah. We’re still close friends.”

“Who is it?” Kiseok asks and when Wonjae looks at him he has that intense look again that makes Wonjae unsure if he needs to hide or not.

“I’m not going to out someone like that,” Wonjae says. “Sorry.”

“Oh, right,” Kiseok says. He doesn’t look sorry for asking.

Sunghwa redirects the conversation to mocking Hyukwoo for his crush and Wonjae relaxes into the more familiar territory.

-.-

**_Part Two_ **

****

**_This ain't a whiskey-drowned ballad_ ** **  
There ain't nothing here that's valid  
So tell me baby, pretty baby, that this house is not a graveyard  
Tell me how to stay strong and carry you home**

**_-I Can’t Do This Alone, 3Oh!3_ **

Kiseok talks to him a lot. On the phone, through text, in person. Wonjae starts working on his first album in January and Kiseok starts working on his own too.

“I want to do something like you,” Kiseok tells him one night when they’re in one of AOMG’s studios. “I want to be honest.”

“So why don’t you?” Wonjae asks. He doesn’t look back at where Kiseok lays on the couch, instead pressing play on the computer and listening as the beat filters through his right headset, the left still tucked behind his ear so he can listen to Kiseok.

“Because it’s terrifying,” Kiseok says.

Wonjae snorts and glances back at him. “Yeah, no shit.”

“It doesn’t seem terrifying for you,” Kiseok says, and he sounds almost petulant about it.

“Yeah, but it is,” Wonjae says.

He readjusts the levels of the part of the track he’s working on and then hits play again. It’s not that he’s blowing him off he just…doesn’t get why Kiseok keeps coming to him for advice. Well…no, he does. It’s flattering and disconcerting all at once. On the one hand it’s nice to be needed and trusted and depended on, but it’s frustrating the way people more than a decade older than him act like he has the keys to the secrets of the universe because his brain doesn’t know how to fucking make serotonin.

So lost in his thoughts, he doesn’t notice Kiseok’s gotten up until he leans against the desk, folding his arms across his chest as he looks down at Wonjae. He pushes his last headset off and lets them hang around his neck.

“I don’t get how you do it,” Kiseok says. Before Wonjae can ask what he means, he continues. “You didn’t even hide that you dated a man, you don’t hide anything about yourself.”

Wonjae seriously wonders if Kiseok’s actually listened to his music or if he’s just like all the other people who just hear what’s on the surface and then slide him neatly into the box of ‘mentally ill kid who it feels good to pity’. He’s starting to feel like it’s the latter. It’s not that he thinks Kiseok doesn’t care about him. It’s more like he’s just…so wrapped up in his own bullshit that he can’t help but come off crass.

He gets it, really. The desperate need to be held and comforted itches under his skin constantly, and he can recognize the same feeling in Kiseok’s voice and his words and his expression. It’s just different from Jeong-sik. He and Jeong-sik were always on the same page – they still were. Kiseok doesn’t seem remotely self-aware of what it is he’s so desperate to have. He doesn’t pity Kiseok, but there is a part of him that wants to help.

“Do you even know what it is that you want?” Wonjae asks.

Kiseok looks down at him, meeting his eyes for a moment before his gaze drops lower to Wonjae’s lips. The effect Kiseok has when his desire is laid so plainly before him is heady. Wonjae isn’t sure if he’s attracted to Kiseok the person or just the idea of being desired so obviously. It’s definitely more of a disaster of an idea than dating Jeong-sik was.

“I just want someone to help me figure out who I am,” Kiseok says, voice soft.

“You think I can do that?” Wonjae asks.

Kiseok grabs the back of Wonjae’s chair, pushing it back so he can slide in the space between Wonjae and the desk. Wonjae lets him, paralyzed by the rush that comes with being wanted.

“Yeah, I do.”

It’s a bad idea, and distantly, Wonjae is aware that there’s nothing he can teach Kiseok. All they can give each other is the temporary feeling of intimacy, but he’s tired and Kiseok is good at making him feel needed. He wants to be needed. He wants to stop thinking about Jeong-sik. So he lets Kiseok lean down and kiss him.

He lets Kiseok tug his headsets off and help him stand up, lets him push him back towards the couch and suck at his throat and chin. He thinks about the tattoo he’ll have there soon, paid for with the money from his song with someone he loves and who loves him and lets Kiseok bite at his skin until it’s bruised. It feels like he’s in college all over again, desperately searching for a connection to patch himself up with even though it’s just temporary. That of all things should be a warning sign that this is a terrible idea, but he needs it too much to really stop.

He’s taken his meds long enough now that he’s actually capable of getting hard so it means he can avoid that particular awkward conversation. It’s not immediately relevant anyways. It doesn’t take long for him to end up on his knees swallowing Kiseok’s dick as Kiseok grasps at the back of his neck and swears. Distantly, very distantly, he’s aware that shit like this isn’t actually helpful. It’s a nice distraction. The feel of Kiseok’s cock on his tongue, the sound of him gasping at the pleasure Wonjae gives him, it all makes his brain feel fuzzy with contentment because he’s helping someone feel good. But he knows they’re both just running.

It doesn’t stop him from grabbing at Kiseok’s knee and holding it tight in one hand while he jacks himself with the other when Kiseok comes in his mouth and on his lips as Wonjae pulls off. Kiseok stares down at him and pushes his fingers through his own come and pushes it into Wonjae’s mouth. Wonjae sucks at his fingers like he did his cock, eyes sliding shut. He doesn’t want to look in Kiseok’s eyes and see the dark hurt that’s lurking so deep inside him that he doesn’t even seem aware. How someone can look so fucking sad when being this close to someone he doesn’t understand, but somehow Kiseok does it.

He comes with Kiseok’s fingers pressing down on his tongue, garbling whatever name spills out of his mouth. He hopes it’s not someone else’s, but his brain feels like it’s moving at a 30bpm rhythm so he can’t be sure. After, he rests his head against Kiseok’s knee. As he catches his breath, he tucks himself away and listens to Kiseok do the same before he reaches up and wipes the remaining mess off his face with the back of his hand and wipes it on his own hoodie. He’ll wash it later. It’s not a big deal, really.

They’re still sitting like that when the ugly feeling that used to dog him after similarly desperate attempts to have some sort of human connection begins to rear its head. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and pushes himself back.

“This was a bad idea,” Wonjae says as he gets to his feet.

“Yeah probably.”

He walks to the computer and saves his work before logging out and unplugging his headsets. It feels hard to breathe as he shoves them in his bag and slings it across his body. He runs a hand through his hair and turns back to Kiseok. Like before, he’s struck by the way Kiseok seems so unaware of how fucked up he is. Sure, he’d said he wanted Wonjae to help him, but it sounds more like a line and less like something he seriously believes, but looking at him now, Wonjae knows he needs to lean on someone. It might as well be him. He won’t get attached.

The problem with Jeong-sik is they could be good together. They’d be codependent on each other, twisted up in their own flaws and love and clinging together out of desperation. Kiseok might cling to him, but Wonjae isn’t so blinded to think that he can rely on Kiseok for much of anything. Maybe it’s dumb to take on the burden, but looking at how deflated Kiseok looks, it’s hard to think of leaving him to figure it out on his own.

“Come home with me,” Wonjae says.

Kiseok does.

-.-

They work on their albums. Kiseok carves his insecurities across Wonjae’s mind as he pours his heart into his lyrics and cries in his arms after. He spends days locked up in his own home and Wonjae goes over whenever he asks to help him clean up, help him shower, force him to eat, fuck around with him until Kiseok is too worn out to do anything but sleep. Wonjae lets Dok-go carve thorns into his neck and shoulder and it bleeds out some of the poison he feels like Kiseok is leaving in him.

It's odd, the way it feels as if the poison is outside him now and he’s let it in. For so long, it feels like it’s been something biological, something written into his genetic code, but somewhere along the line that feeling had started to ease up. Now it’s just replaced with Kiseok and all his fears and insecurities. Wonjae bears the burden because he knows he can. Bearing his own burdens has never been a given but bearing Kiseok’s feels possible. It’s exhausting but it’s fine. He’s fine.

-.-

“Hey. Wonjae? Wonjae. Hey.”

Wonjae mumbles out a noise when the couch he’s lying on shifts from someone kicking it. He wipes a hand down his face and opens his eyes. Sunghwa stares down at him, a concerned look in his eyes. It takes a moment for his brain to recalibrate. He has a vague recollection of Kiseok crying on the phone with him the night before, so he’d come over and they’d talked and then almost fucked but Kiseok couldn’t get hard and then he cried some more…

“Holy shit,” Wonjae says, sitting up. His eyes burn from the lack of sleep and his body aches from the awkward position he’d been laying in.

“Yeah, long night huh?” Sunghwa says, voice tense.

“Something like that,” Wonjae says. “What’s going on? How’d you get in?”

“I have a key,” Sunghwa says. “And neither of you were answering your phones and Kiseok was drunk texting me last night.”

Wonjae stares up at him and that’s when it hits. Sunghwa knows. Not that he was really hiding it from anyone, but he thinks it’s been clear for weeks that this isn’t the healthiest choice he’s made.

“I’m just trying to help,” Wonjae says.

“We’ll talk about that later. For now just…go home. I’ll call you later, okay?”

Wonjae nods and gets to his feet, picking his jacket up off the floor and finding his keys under the couch before heading for the door as Sunghwa heads down the hall to Kiseok’s room. It’s not that he’s ashamed. He was trying to help. He just…feels like he failed. Like he couldn’t keep it together for the both of them. Out of the two, he’s the one who has better self-awareness of what it is to be depressed and anxious

When he gets home, he showers, feeds all of his cats, and then collapses into his bed. He turns over the events of the night before. He, unfortunately, likely remembers it better than Kiseok did considering how drunk Kiseok had been. Unlike Kiseok, he’s going to have to carry the full memories of how sad the whole ordeal made him, how helpless he’d felt that he hadn’t been able to help in any meaningful way.

Kiseok isn’t Jeong-sik. He knows he’s fucked up, but Wonjae isn’t sure if he wants to get better. In a way, Wonjae can sympathize with it. Maybe getting involved with Kiseok in the first place was how he was avoiding getting better himself. Getting better required…change. Instability.

By the time he gets a knock on his door from Sunghwa over an hour later, he still hasn’t sorted out how he feels about the whole thing. He lets Sunghwa in and takes a seat at his small table. Sunghwa takes his shoes off and then heads for Wonjae’s coffee maker, setting about making them both coffee without even asking. It’s good probably that he has such good friends. He just wishes he wasn’t in a position where he needed them to take care of him.

The sound of the water beginning to bubble seems too loud as Sunghwa turns to face him, arms folding across his chest. Wonjae is struck by the sudden urge to go hide in the bathroom. He feels like a child about to be scolded and it makes shame and embarrassment curdle together in his stomach.

“I’m not upset with you,” Sunghwa says. “I’m upset with Kiseok. This is not the first time he’s tried to ignore his problems by sucking someone else into a spiral with him and it won’t be the last. I’m not going to stand by and let him do it to you though.”

“I’m sorry,” Wonjae says and continues before Sunghwa can interrupt him. “I know you said you’re not mad at me, but I’m sorry I couldn’t…I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it together for myself or him.”

“It’s not your job,” Sunghwa says. “Fucking…you’re twenty-one. Kiseok is an adult who should know better.”

“I know more about this,” Wonjae says. “And I’m also an adult.”

Sunghwa looks angry at the words and he opens his mouth before snapping it shut again and then turning away entirely to start searching through his cabinets for clean mugs. “Being mentally ill for most of your life doesn’t mean you mean you have the capacity to take care of a thirty-four-year-old man who has enough money to go to therapy if he actually wanted to get better.”

“He said he did.” Wonjae isn’t sure why he’s arguing. He knows, on some level at least, that Sunghwa is right. But maybe…maybe he needs to be convinced.

“He does,” Sunghwa says. “This is his idea of getting help.”

The words sting because Wonjae…he wanted… “I wanted to be enough to help.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sunghwa says. He pulls out two mugs as the coffee machine beeps and pours them each a cup. “I know you want to help, but I’m telling you that it isn’t your responsibility to help him and it doesn’t mean you’re not strong enough because you couldn’t. No one is strong enough to do that.”

“Are you saying he’s helpless?”

“No, I’m saying it’s impossible to fuck someone and be their therapist at the same time,” Sunghwa says.

Wonjae flinches when he sets the mug down on the table in front of him and Sunghwa sighs after, reaching out to squeeze Wonjae’s shoulder before sitting down across from him. “I fucked up.”

“Yeah, but he fucked up more,” Sunghwa says. “Like I said, this isn’t the first time he’s done this. His way of coping is to drag someone down with him until they both crash and burn and then he’ll be fine for a while and then he’ll do it all over again. I should’ve seen it coming and said something.”

“It’s not like he took advantage of me,” Wonjae says. He sips at the coffee, his eyes watering at how bitter it is. Sunghwa must not have slept well.

“He did,” Sunghwa says. “Emotionally he did. I don’t know about the rest of it, but I’ll listen if you need to talk about what all went down.”

Wonjae shakes his head. “I…just feel dumb.”

“There’s nothing dumb about caring about people,” Sunghwa says.

“I was just trying to make him feel less alone,” Wonjae says. “It…fucking around helped me in college.”

“It’s just temporary though, isn’t it?” Sunghwa asks.

“Yeah.” And he’d known that going in. “I just thought maybe I could do more than that.”

“You won’t be able to, not until he deals with his shit properly,” Sunghwa says. “And if it helps at all, I think he will. I don’t think he wanted to hurt you or use you like that, it’s just something he keeps doing. I think it hit home this time.”

“Well, at least I can be of some use,” Wonjae says with a short laugh as he looks up to finally meet Sunghwa’s eyes.

“You are so much more than a stepping stool for someone else’s growth, Wonjae,” Sunghwa says. His foot knocks against Wonjae’s shin. “You hear me?” Wonjae nods but Sunghwa just kicks his shin again. “Say it.”

“I’m more than a stepping stool for someone else’s growth,” Wonjae says. He can feel tears stinging at the corners of his eyes, can feel his lower lip start to tremble, and he just knows his facial expression is pinching up into that ugly expression before someone loses it.

Sunghwa sighs as Wonjae crumples in on himself, but he doesn’t sound frustrated or upset. There’s the scrape of his chair moving back and then he’s standing beside Wonjae instead. He doesn’t recoil when Wonjae hugs him. Not even when Wonjae’s tears start to soak his shirt. He just holds him until Wonjae can start patching the wound he didn’t even realize he’d had.

-.-

****

Wonjae starts seriously writing his first EP as winter starts to give way to spring with the help of Sungwoo shortly after he transfers his contract to AOMG. His presence gives him an excuse to get distance from Kiseok the way he had to get distance from Jeong-sik, and while there’s certainly no romantic undertones, he’s grateful for the steady mentorship Sungwoo provides. He never bats an eye at Wonjae’s lyrics or his thoughts. When he doesn’t understand he just asks.

He feels safe the way Jeong-sik does, except not because he understands how Wonjae feels, but because he listens.

A finger taps his shoulder and Wonjae curses and yanks his headphones off as he sits up. He doesn’t even remember falling asleep at his desk, but there’s a puddle of drool on his notebook, smearing his lyrics. Next to him, Jaebeom lets out a small laugh and passes Wonjae a tissue. Wonjae flushes as he wipes his mouth off and then shoves his journal aside. In front of him, the computer monitor has gone dark.

“I appreciate the hard work, but you’ve been staying late every night. You’re starting to worry me,” Jaebeom says.

Wonjae shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

Jaebeom looks at him with a disbelieving look in his eyes. “Uh-huh.”

“Do you think I’m weak?” Wonjae asks, the question spilling out of his sleep-soaked brain before he can stop it.

Jaebeom frowns as he steps away. “Is that a trick question?”

Wonjae blinks and then remembers how he’d been upset with Jaebeom for calling him strong. That starts him down a whole other line of thinking and he groans before rubbing at his eyes and then temples. “Sorry. Ignore me. I was thinking about something else.”

“Does this have to do with Kiseok?”

“I guess.” Wonjae looks back at him. “I didn’t realize Sunghwa told you.”

“He didn’t. Kiseok did,” Jaebeom says. “Mostly because I’m the CEO and I need to know shit like that.”

“Fucking…fuck me,” Wonjae mumbles, dropping his head back to his desk and then knocking it against the wood a few more times for emphasis. “Do you regret signing me yet?”

“Nah,” Jaebeom says. “If I kicked you and Kiseok out for making bad choices about fucking your coworkers, I would have to kick myself out too.”

Wonjae frowns down at the desk and then turns his head to look up at Jaebeom again. “I thought you said you and Hyunjung didn’t fuck?”

“We…did not,” Jaebeom says, tone slow as realization dawns on his face. “You know what? Forget I said anything.”

“Uh…” Wonjae scrambles to list the AOMG members in his head just to double check and then squints. “Hey Jaebeom?”

“Uh-huh?” Jaebeom’s voice seems to climb several octaves as he walks back towards the door.

“Hyunjung is the only woman in AOMG.”

Jaebeom freezes with his hand on the studio door handle. “She sure is.”

“Okay,” Wonjae says. “Just checking. It’s fine.”

“It’s not like it’s a thing,” Jaebeom says. “I’m not…it’s…holy shit I sound like…”

Wonjae feels his lips stretch into a smile as he turns his chair fully around to face Jaebeom who is now hitting his head against the studio door the way Wonjae had done the same to his desk. “You sound like who?”

“A very closeted and very homosexual man I know,” Jaebeom says in English before switching back to Korean. “Forget I said anything. I’m not gay.”

“That’s a shame about the other guy though. That he’s closeted I mean.”

Jaebeom shakes his head and drags himself away from the door to turn and look at him. “It’s fine. He has a boyfriend that he’s sickeningly in love with.”

“So he’s out to his friends?” Wonjae asks.

“Yup.” Jaebeom looks away from him, expression twisting into a grimace. “God, I’m worse than him aren’t I? I’m actually worse. Jesus Christ.”

“I can’t really help if I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wonjae says.

Jaebeom’s gaze snaps back to him. “I’m not asking for help. I’m just having some realizations about myself, that’s all.”

Wonjae laughs at that, short at first, and then throwing his head back and laughing from his gut when he sees Jaebeom’s expression sour to an almost comical degree. “Shit, I’m sorry, it’s not…I’m not laughing at you being gay or whatever, I just-“

“I’m bi. For the record,” Jaebeom says in a rush. “And I definitely prefer women.”

Wonjae covers his mouth with his hand, physically forcing his lips to stop grinning before he pulls his hand away. “Right. Of course.”

“Fuck yeah of course. What the fuck…” Jaebeom’s voice trails off into a mutter as he turns back to the studio door and yanks it open before abruptly spinning on his heel and jabbing a finger towards Wonjae. “But so what if I preferred men?”

“I’ve only ever fucked guys so…” Wonjae says. It takes everything in him not to smile as Jaebeom’s face goes on yet another journey of self-realization before pinching up again.

“Right. Okay.”

“Yeah?” Wonjae asks, biting at the inside of his cheek as his shoulders start to shake from trying not to laugh.

“Yeah. Great. Good talk. You need anything else?”

“Nope!”

Jaebeom nods and then all but throws himself out of the studio, not even bothering to shut the door as he flees. Wonjae feels wrong staying when Jaebeom had shown up to tell him to get some rest. Sure, the conversation had turned into a train wreck, but he had tried, and Wonjae does need to do something other than work and sleep slumped over his desk. As amusing as the conversation was, it does make him think.

He's not really sure how he keeps attracting people like Kiseok and Jaebeom.

-.-

He doesn’t talk about Jaebeom’s miniature sexuality crisis to anyone but Sunghwa, and even that’s only because Sunghwa asks him about it when he’s in the studio with him to show him some new beats for his album. It’s one thing for Jaebeom to know what happened between him and Kiseok. He’s the CEO after all. It’s different to gossip about his CEO, especially about something as serious as sexuality, and especially when he’s so insecure about it.

“That’s partially my fault,” Sunghwa says as he loads up his music programs. “I said some things back when he first started AOMG and signed me.”

“Like…homophobic?”

Sunghwa shakes his head. “Not really. I just…said some shit I shouldn’t have. And did some other shit I also shouldn’t have.” He pauses mid-click. “Okay, yeah, it was a little homophobic. I really shouldn’t say more though. If he ever wants to talk to you about it, he will, I’ll tell him I don’t care if you know. Honestly, it’s just nice that he might have someone to talk to about it outside Kiseok.”

“Why is it starting to feel like I’m the least repressed person here?” Wonjae says.

“Outside Hyunjung, you are,” Sunghwa says. He tilts head to look at Wonjae. “Did you really not think that?”

“I guess…yeah I’m pretty honest about how I feel but I try and keep the worst of it from people,” he says. “It’s why um…I think being with Kiseok was hard.” He glances down at his hands, fingers picking at the cuticles on his right hand. “All the shit I try to protect people from as friends gets in the way.”

“Have you tried to protect me from things?” Sunghwa asks.

Wonjae nods, throat tightening. “Yeah.”

“Like what? Just one example, you don’t have to get into it,” Sunghwa says.

“Uh…” Wonjae’s knee bounces as he opts to flick his gaze up towards the ceiling instead. “Like. How bad it is? Lyrics are pretty or poetic or whatever, but the actual…feelings? The thought patterns? I hide those from most people.”

“Most?”

“Jeong-sik and I talk about it. Still do sometimes, but we try to stay apart,” Wonjae says.

“Oh, that’s uh, Black Nine right?” Sunghwa asks.

Wonjae nods. “Yeah.”

“Why stay away from each other?”

“We were worried we’d get like too…dependent on each other?” Wonjae shrugs. “And then I did that with Kiseok anyways so I guess I can’t help that.”

“Is that the ex? That you were talking about earlier?” Sunghwa asks.

Wonjae nods again, the moment jerkier than before. “I…probably shouldn’t tell you? That…I don’t think he’s out.”

“I meant what I said earlier, you know? I want you to talk to me about stuff, so I’m not gonna tell anyone anything you tell me,” Sunghwa says. “And…I don’t think you should avoid Jeong-sik. If you help each other, maybe that’s good for you both.”

“Maybe.”

Sunghwa turns back to the computer to pull up the first beat, but Wonjae finds his thoughts wandering to a morning nearly a year ago when he’d felt as if someone had truly understood him and put him back together.

-.-

In spring, he gets a call requesting he features on a song for Vinxen, one of the contestants for High School Rapper. He binge watches the episodes he missed to catch up on who he is, and then digs through forums and shaky videos of underground clubs he’s performed at. He wonders if this is how Tiger JK felt when he handed Wonjae a necklace. There’s something about seeing someone younger hurting the way he does that is like a hot iron pressing into a raw nerve. With Kiseok, he’d wanted to take on all his burdens, but he’d gotten drowned.

Watching Vinxen, it feels closer to what he feels with Jeong-sik. Like he’s watching a kindred soul, someone he wants to help grow and grow alongside.

He agrees right away, and they send him the beat with a rough draft of Vinxen, or rather Byungjae’s lyrics. The theme is good, the type of honesty that Wonjae prefers. He gets how hard it is to go up on a stage and be that honest though, more than anyone, and Byungjae is even younger than him.

“It really worries you doesn’t it?” Sungwoo asks.

Wonjae pauses from bouncing his pen against the couch arm across from where Sungwoo sits at his computer creating beats for someone else’s project. “What do you mean?”

Sungwoo spins in his chair to face him. “To see someone else like you on stage. It worries you.”

“I guess,” Wonjae says. “I know what pushes someone to be so honest in their lyrics, and it…I don’t know. I just want to help.”

“That’s how people feel about you,” Sungwoo says, then lifts one arm in a shrug. “Well, at least most of us here.” Wonjae’s eyes narrow but Sungwoo’s already holding his hands up in surrender as if he knows what he’s said wrong. “It’s not pity. Do you pity him?”

Wonjae frowns and looks down at his lyrics. “No. But it’s different. We have the same issues, or at least, they’re similar. It’s not like you or Jaebeom or Sunghwa want to help me because you understand.”

“Maybe not, but we don’t want to help you because we pity you either,” Sungwoo says. “But hey, maybe I’m just talking out my ass.”

“You’re not,” Wonjae says as he looks back up. “You can’t fool me into thinking that it’s just a joke to you, you know that right?”

Sungwoo grins. “Yeah I know. But I wouldn’t worry about Byungjae. Just giving him someone to lean on for strength on stage will be more than enough, I’m sure.”

It’s true enough. Byungjae isn’t Kiseok. He isn’t thirteen years older with all the engrained failed coping mechanisms that chew people up and spit them out, and Wonjae isn’t Kiseok either. Wonjae doesn’t want to help Byungjae as a way to actually help himself. He just…wants to help him. If he can do that with one song, with one performance, then he’ll happily be that pillar to rely on. It’s less hard, after all, to rip yourself apart on stage when you know someone is there to help put you back together.

He finishes the song a week later and shows up for rehearsal the next day, meeting Byungjae face to face. It’s business as usual at first, but after the first few runs of rehearsal, coupled with adjustments from his mentor team, Wonjae asks for Byungjae to join him on his smoke break.

“You don’t get to have any though, this is for me,” Wonjae says, keeping his tone light as they escape into one of the outside alleys outside the production studio and away from the prying cameras. “I’m not letting anyone say I corrupted you.”

He unplugs his mic and watches as Byungjae does the same before leaning heavily against the wall and closing his eyes, hands jammed in his jacket pockets. Wonjae fishes out his cigarettes and shoves one in his mouth before lighting it. He thinks of what it is he wants to say in this short period of time he’s carved out for them to be face to face without mics or cameras or eavesdroppers.

“What do you need from me? On stage I mean,” Wonjae says. “Rehearsal is one thing, but when you actually perform this tonight, what is it that you need from me to help you?”

Byungjae starts, looking over at Wonjae as if he’s thrown off by the offer. “I’m not a kid you know.”

Wonjae frowns. “I’m not asking because I’m treating you like a kid.”

But when he thinks about it, isn’t that the issue? People look at him and Byungjae, just on the cusp of adulthood, or just a few years in, and they see fully formed adults because they’ve faced more hardship than most anyone else their own age. That’s what mental illness does, isn’t it? It ages them. But does it really? He looks at Byungjae and he sees someone who’s still a kid. He sees someone that could be taken advantage of, someone who someone could treat like…

_I’m more than a stepping stool for someone else’s growth._

“I know what it’s like to go up on stage and perform something so painful, so I’m asking if you need something from me to be able to do it better,” Wonjae asks. “You’re not weak.”

“I’m not strong either,” Byungjae says.

“Yeah, I know,” Wonjae says. “You know…” He takes a drag of his cigarette and releases the smoke slow up into the air as he organizes his thoughts. “I’ve always told people performing shit like this is an act of weakness because I always feel desperate when I do it. It feels like I don’t have any other choice.” When he glances back at Byungjae, he’s nodding, staring down at the ground. “But I’m thinking maybe it’s neither. It’s not strength or weakness. It’s just how we cope. If we feel better on the other side, truly better, than it’s okay.”

“It’s always temporary,” Byungjae says quietly. “I feel better for a few hours but then it creeps back in.”

It. The dark slithering feeling, the toxic sludge that even now, even after yanking it out again and again, still lurks in his chest. It’s quieter now, smaller, but Wonjae knows it’ll never go away.

“So what do you need from me?” he asks again.

“I need…” Byungjae looks back up at the sky that’s beginning to go dark as night settles in. “I need to know I’m not alone up there. This time…I need someone to make me feel like I’m not gonna be alone when it’s all over.”

“Okay,” Wonjae says. “I won’t. I’ll stay until you’re ready to leave.”

“Anyone ever tell you it’s kinda weird how much you care about people you just met?” Byungjae asks, a small smile on his lips when he looks over at Wonjae.

“I seem to draw people to me and then I want to take care of them for better or worse,” Wonjae says with a shrug. “This feels good though. I feel like we’ve created something good.”

The smile on Byungjae’s face grows. “Yeah, me too.”

-.-

He watches the monitors from behind stage as Byungjae performs. Hearing and watching him live is different and he finds himself getting emotional watching, and it’s even worse as the cameras cut to Byungjae’s parents. It reminds him too much of how sad his own mother had been. It makes him think again of how mental illness makes people look at them as less than human when that’s all they are, and more than a child when they’re still children. He wishes he could tear it all down.

But he can’t. He’s just one person, and Byungjae is just one person. The best they can do is be as honest as they can on stage and make it a little easier for the people like them to feel less alone. The more visible they are, the more human they become. So he pulls himself on stage and as the doors part and the crowd cheers he pours as much as he can into his lyrics.

Performing next to Byungjae is electrifying. There’s something about being next to someone who feels the same emotions as him, the emotions and energy they pour into their performance twisting together. When they stand across from each other as he ends his verse and Byungjae straightens back up for the pre-chorus, their eyes meet and Wonjae knows what he needs to finish off strong. He holds his gaze as Byungjae speaks of his scars. He gives Byungjae some place to dump his pain that isn’t a crowd. He makes sure Byungjae knows he’s far from alone.

It’s hard to trust a crowd of strangers to catch you with something like this. Wonjae knows that from his own performances, so he doesn’t mind giving Byungjae a different target to rely on instead. He’s grateful in a way. For months he’s agonized over not being strong enough to hold Kiseok’s pain for him, but as he stands across from Byungjae it hits him that letting someone use him up is different from this. It’s different from standing side by side with someone and trading their strength and weakness back and forth.

He’s not sure he’ll ever share that realization with Byungjae. As much as Byungjae insisted he wasn’t a child, as much as Wonjae has felt that he himself was more of an adult than he is, he knows that they both are still young. The problem isn’t that their mental disorders aged them beyond their years. It’s that their mental disorders robbed them of their innocence and made the ones who were supposed to protect them feel as if they didn’t need that protection. It’s sad. But, at least in this way, he can bear his burden himself, and give Byungjae the protection he needs for just a little while.

-.-

He spends the summer reconnecting with Kiseok and working on his own album, and also mulling over Sunghwa’s words about how he deserves to be able to have relationships with people. With Jeong-sik. Tentatively, he reaches out. They hang out more, they spend more time together, and he finds it harder and harder when they leave each other’s presence not to kiss him goodbye.

And sometimes he catches Jeong-sik staring at him out of the corner of his eye and it takes everything in him not to mention it. It doesn’t feel like before either. It’s not like he feels as though he needs to be with Jeong-sik. He’s not desperate for his attention and his affection the way he had been a year ago with the weight of filming bearing down on the both of them. It’s not _need_. It’s want. That, he thinks, is the key difference. That’s what makes it possible for a real relationship to exist instead of a toxic codependency born of insecurity.

Wonjae is half asleep with the final cut of his album clicking through the Noise track when he asks Jeong-sik if he wants to try dating. His head is pillowed on Jeong-sik’s sternum. They’re lying in Jeong-sik’s bed as the fan spins above them, slow and lazy and doing nothing at all for the summer heat’s the decided to linger into the start of fall. The words spill out in a mumble and Jeong-sik huffs out a laugh as his thumb rubs along the curve of Wonjae’s jaw.

“Ask me when you’re awake,” Jeong-sik says, and Wonjae can tell from his tone that he really does think Wonjae is sleep talking.

There’s a fondness there that he rarely lets slip out. It makes Wonjae hate how careful they’ve been with each other, being physically close but always being careful about what they say and how they say it. He shifts, turns his head, and kisses the pad of Jeong-sik’s thumb.

“I’m awake,” Wonjae whispers. Jeong-sik inhales, sharp. Wonjae moves to rest his forearms on Jeong-sik’s abdomen as he looks up at him. “Do you want to try dating?”

Jeong-sik leans up on his elbows. “Didn’t you say it was a bad idea?”

“It was too raw then,” Wonjae says. “But now it just feels like we’re ignoring how we feel about each other for no good reason. Do you feel like you need me?”

Jeong-sik doesn’t answer right away, instead mulling it over before speaking. “I think there’s no one else like you in my life, but I don’t think that means I need you or rely on you too much. I just want you here. And I…If it doesn’t work out, I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”

“You won’t,” Wonjae says.

“You say that so confidently,” Jeong-sik says with a small laugh.

“Yeah, because I love you as a friend first,” Wonjae says. “That’s always gonna matter more to me.”

“Then…yeah. Let’s try,” Jeong-sik says.

Wonjae smiles, his stomach aflutter with something that might be joy or happiness. He’s still getting used to the feeling when it comes, but he tries to name it when he feels it. It’s a feeling he wants to get used to.

-.-

Wonjae takes Jeong-sik with him to Mongolia to film his music video, blowing it off to the crew that Jeong-sik is just a friend. It hurts a little that they have to hide, but it’s only from people that aren’t their close friends, so the hurt is soothed by the extra days in the hotel he purchases for them to enjoy themselves. He’s still getting used to it – the way he can just spend money. He tries not to get crazy with it. He pays for his parents, for himself, and then stashes the rest away with the help of Jaebeom’s accountant to save for retirement like a boring office worker would. It’s nice to not think about the extra cost of a five-star hotel suite for a few more nights. He’s not sure if the immediate anxiety when he first sees the bill will ever go away though.

“You didn’t seem to mind spending the money for the music video,” Jeong-sik says as he floats in the private pool of their suite that looks over the city when Wonjae mentions it.

The night air is cool, but the water is heated when Wonjae slides into the pool and wades over Jeong-sik. “That was CEO Park’s money, not mine.”

Jeong-sik hums as Wonjae’s hand knocks against his as Wonjae shifts so that he can float alongside him. Even with the city lights, they can still see some of the stars.

“Jay Park must really like you if he’s willing to spend that much,” Jeong-sik says.

“You know, he said he didn’t care if I never made him any money,” Wonjae says, and it feels absurd when he says it out loud. “He just wants me to create music.”

It hits him as he says it just how strange that is. Everything about his relationship with Jaebeom has been strange from the start, from the way he’d kissed his hand in a dark hallway to how happily he let Wonjae his spend money to create without a care if it was profitable. Time will tell with his new album, but Jaebeom has been firm from the start that he doesn’t care if Wonjae makes him anything at all. Even when Wonjae’s asked if his music was okay, if Jaebeom was okay with the songs he wanted to release, Jaebeom had just said all that mattered was that Wonjae was happy.

It’s like…it’s like unconditional love.

“You’re lucky you have that,” Jeong-sik says, the teasing note in his voice jerking Wonjae out of his thoughts. “I should find a sugar daddy like you.”

Wonjae squawks out a noise of protest, lunging at Jeong-sik and laughing when he drags him down and they both get a mouthful of pool water. He laughs, unrestrained, as they take turns dunking each other and then trying to get away. They tangle together and by the time Jeong-sik catches Wonjae properly, trapping him against the side of the pool, they’re both panting and Wonjae’s abdomen hurts from laughing. His cheeks likewise burn from the stretch of the smile that won’t leave. How odd, that since he met Jeong-sik a year ago, he’s started to smile more and more, using muscles that had fallen to disuse after so many years. Thinking about it makes him feel older than he is.

Having Jeong-sik kiss the smile from his lips makes him feel his age again.

Wonjae holds tight to Jeong-sik’s shoulders and back, gasping against his mouth as Jeong-sik’s hands slide under his ass. He pushes Wonjae’s back hard against the edge of the pool. His tongue slicks against his lips and then deeper and Wonjae grazes it with his teeth on accident but the messy slide just makes him like it even more. He likes that they can mess up and keep touching. It’s not a performance. They’re touching because they want to, because they can, because-

“Ah…”

Jeong-sik’s lips press to his throat, just below his jaw on the right side and without his lips to silence him, Wonjae can’t help but make noise. He digs his fingers into Jeong-sik’s thick shoulder. His other hand drops to Jeong-sik’s arm and fuck he keeps forgetting how much bigger than him Jeong-sik is. He squeezes tighter just because he can and he feels Jeong-sik smile against his throat like he knows exactly what Wonjae is doing, flexing his arm a moment later for added effect.

“Shit-“ Wonjae gasps the curse up towards the sky and flushes at the deep laugh against his skin before Jeong-sik kisses under his chin and moves to trace the thinnest parts of the tattooed thorns with his lips.

Wonjae jerks in his grasp, his mind and body hovering the precipice of something dangerous. He loves the tattoo. He does. But he can’t ever forget when it was created and how much of it had been a desperate attempt to relieve himself of the poison he’d taken on trying to fix someone else. Because Jeong-sik is Jeong-sik, and because he knows Wonjae better than anyone, he notices the change. Wonjae swallows hard and his eyes blur with frustrated tears.

“It’s fine. I’m fine, we can-“

“Hey, stop,” Jeong-sik says, pulling back and nudging at Wonjae’s cheek with his nose until he looks down. “Want me to just avoid it?”

“Yeah, for now,” Wonjae says. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Jeong-sik sounds and the sincerity in his voice makes Wonjae feel like he’s been caught and mended before he even fully breaks apart.

Their lips press together, but it’s so light Wonjae doesn’t know if he could call it a kiss. They share air between them, and Wonjae feels hyper aware of the sound of the pool water splashing up onto the concrete, of the feel of Jeong-sik’s lips knocking against his, of the way the pool lights cast Jeong-sik’s face in shadow. He leans forward and presses their lips together in a firmer touch. Jeong-sik’s fingers skate down over his sides, his ribs, the movement smooth in the water. He exhales, shaky, and Jeong-sik kisses him harder in response.

It’s more intense like this, the pace slow and careful. He wraps his legs around Jeong-sik’s waist tighter than before, making it easier for Jeong-sik to hold him against the side of the pool with his hips so his fingers can play along Wonjae’s sides. It’s a ticklish feeling that borders on making him laugh, but it’s firm enough to tip over to pleasure instead. He can hear noises spilling from his lips, embarrassing little things that Jeong-sik drinks down with his lips as Wonjae trembles from the tiny shocks of pleasure that Jeong-sik’s fingers send through his skin.

The lightness of it makes him crave more. The water sloshes over the edge of the pool as Wonjae rocks his hips, fingers biting at the back of Jeong-sik’s neck for leverage. Jeong-sik’s teeth graze over his lower lip in response. A moment later, one of his hands slides down under Wonjae’s ass, helping him find a better rhythm until finally they’re grinding together. Wonjae can feel Jeong-sik’s cock hard against his own through their wet shorts and part of him wants to reach down, stroke them both hard and fast until they both come, but he likes this better. The closeness of Jeong-sik’s body, the feel of their wet skin, all of it chases away the moment of despair that had almost poisoned the moment.

“Don’t wanna think about anyone but you,” he gasps out at his arousal spins higher. “Ever. Just you, always, please-“

It feels like half nonsense that he mumbles against Jeong-sik’s lips. He means it though. He wants to burn these sensations into his memory. He wants to tattoo every press of Jeong-sik’s fingers into his skin and maybe he needs to assess why the thought of having his lovers permanently etched into his skin turns him on so much. Maybe later. Maybe when he has energy for processing anything other than how good it feels to have Jeong-sik against him.

When he comes, it doesn’t feel like enough. He feels it, shakes through it, but he wants more. Jeong-sik’s touches, while pleasurable, had been too light.

They leave the pool and drop their wet swim shorts in the doorway before dripping water through the hotel suite as they make their way back towards the master suite. It feels hedonistic to not care about getting the sheets wet as they tumble into bed together, but he’s too desperate for more of Jeong-sik’s body against his to care. Jeong-sik leaves him long enough to grab lube out of Wonjae’s carry on that lies on the floor. Then he’s back, his lips greedy and wet on Wonjae’s and his cock hard as it leaves a mess of precoma on Wonjae’s hip as they press back together.

“Want you,” Wonjae says, his voice strained.

Want. Not need. Wanting feels like such a luxury. The hotel suite, the expensive music video shoot, the silk sheets, all of it pales in comparison to the ability to need no one and drown instead in the feeling of want and desire. He doesn’t need Jeong-sik. Not the way Kiseok needed him. Not the way he and Jeong-sik needed each other a year ago. He desires Jeong-sik, craves him, and that feeling is so much better.

He ends up face down on the bed, a cushion under his hips, as Jeong-sik presses inside. He covers Wonjae with the warmth of his body, his hands pressing into Wonjae’s wrists where they lay on either side of his head. When he grinds in, Wonjae moans his name, voice cracking at the end. Jeong-sik kisses his left shoulder, then the base of his neck. Wonjae can feel him avoiding the thorns, but he doesn’t want him to, not this time.

“You can-“ he gasps out, something closer to a whimper escaping him as Jeong-sik rolls his hips in a steady rhythm that has him feeling like his brain is static. “The…the tattoo, you can…”

Jeong-sik hums a noise of assent and then his lips track back. Wonjae squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on the way Jeong-sik’s lips feel as they brush over the path of the tattoo. The sick feeling from before is nowhere to be found this time. He sighs, relaxing in Jeong-sik’s grip.

“That better?” Jeong-sik asks.

“Y-Yeah…”

He keeps the pace slow, but hard. It’s a direct counterpart to what they’d done in the pool earlier. Every touch is firm, his fingers harsh on Wonjae’s wrists and Wonjae is pretty sure he’s going to have bruises after, pretty things that make him feel warm and cherished. Jeong-sik shifts, fucking him deeper, and their lips slide together. It’s hard at this angle, but Wonjae doesn’t mind. He just wants Jeong-sik as close as possible.

Jeong-sik pulls back for a moment, the chill of the loss of his body heat making Wonjae shiver, but he makes up for it when he pulls Wonjae’s hips up even further, knocking the cushion aside before sliding back in. The angle is better than before and Wonjae bites at his pillow, fingers curling into fists as he keens. Jeong-sik sighs out something that might be his name but he can’t tell from the way blood roars through his ears at the myriad of sensations flooding through him.

Another roll of his hips and Jeong-sik’s cock pushes hard against his prostate and Wonjae spasms, coming again. Jeong-sik feels him, he must, because he draws it out, pulling out before fucking back inside with quick movements, over and over, the pressure drawing out Wonjae’s orgasm until he feels like his brain has turned to mush and he goes limp on the mattress. He stops before it becomes too much, planting his hands on either side of Wonjae’s head as he goes still. Wonjae can see his arms tremble with the effort of it.

“It’s okay,” he drawls out, low and muffled. “Just, gentle, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jeong-sik says with a shaky breath.

He presses Wonjae to the mattress then, into his own mess, but Wonjae doesn’t mind because he has the heat of Jeong-sik’s body stretched back over him again. It doesn’t take him long to come. Wonjae squeezes down around his cock with every thrust, hiding his smile in the pillow when he hears Jeong-sik’s breathing go rough and his voice stutter around Wonjae’s name.

“I’m gonna…Wonjae…”

“Yeah, come on, come on,” Wonjae says, lips pressing to Jeong-sik’s cheek when he leans down over Wonjae.

He comes barely a second later, moaning out Wonjae’s name like Wonjae’s somehow changed his life. Wonjae’s never seen sex as something life changing. It’s only ever been a temporary band-aid on his loneliness. This doesn’t feel like this. Every time he and Jeong-sik have fucked has felt like the whole world has recalibrated, leaving him content and satisfied with how close they are to each other.

Maybe it’s because they don’t part right away. Jeong-sik stays inside him for a long few moments, and even when he pulls out and flops onto his back, Wonjae’s allowed to squirm back on top of him and into his arms. He’s allowed to steal kisses and ask for Jeong-sik to keep touching him. And Jeong-sik does, happily, his fingers tracing nonsensical designs over Wonjae’s sides and back, and they’re messy and a little bit gross, but it doesn’t make Wonjae feel insecure.

They shower together in one of the stupidly big showers that could fit ten people and then relocate to one of the spare bedrooms to sleep, tumbling together under warm blankets and wrapped up in each other so much that Wonjae feels like they’re one person. He falls asleep to Jeong-sik’s lips pressed to the thorns at his throat.

-.-

Dating Jeong-sik makes it easier to be around Kiseok. It also helps that Kiseok is, for the most part, choosing to bring his problems to his other friends and not Wonjae. In hindsight, and with his budding mentorship to Byungjae, it’s clearer to him now just how fucked up their dynamic had been with each other, even if he couldn’t bring himself to fully blame Kiseok for it. It’s also nice that he doesn’t have to hide his relationship from his labelmates. He gets some playful ribbing about it, but for the most part it rarely comes up.

Jaebeom throws a party, an unofficial celebration of his album, but it’s relatively small in comparison to some of the other’s Wonjae’s seen him throw. It still requires renting a mansion, so Wonjae isn’t sure he has any sense of scale left since he’s signed with AOMG. There’s a lot of girls, a lot of industry professionals, a lot of people Wonjae’s seen on stage but still hasn’t had the chance to meet until now, but he still finds himself lingering on the edges of the celebration. The only upside is that he got to invite Jeong-sik too.

There’s too many people for them to be openly dating which sucks, but it also gives Jeong-sik an excuse to network so Wonjae doesn’t mind. He wants Jeong-sik to find the same success he has, so he doesn’t mind. Sungwoo grins at him when their eyes meet as Wonjae manages to slink his way out of yet another conversation, but he doesn’t draw anyone’s attention to him, so he’s able to steal down one of the hallways and head downstairs.

He passes a few people on the stairs on his way down, but when he reaches the lower level entertaining area, it’s mostly empty. From the sounds from above, everyone’s just buzzed. They’re not drunk or stoned enough to start looking for somewhere to crash for the evening, so he’s probably got a few hours of peace if he wants it. Part of him wants to find Jeong-sik and just go home, but he doesn’t want to be a killjoy either.

He’s approaching the stocked wet bar on the far wall when he hears other footsteps coming down the stairs. When he turns around, he sees Jeong-sik at the bottom of the stairs, glancing around as he starts to unzip his hoodie and then pausing when he sees Wonjae, lips stretching into a smile.

“Oh hey, I was just trying to catch a break but this works,” he says.

“Get tired of schmoozing?” Wonjae teases. He likes how easy the teasing tone comes to him, and he likes the way Jeong-sik laughs in response.

“Yeah, that’s all I was doing,” Jeong-sik says.

He glances around again as he approaches but as far as Wonjae can tell they’re alone. Still, they shouldn’t do anything. Not when anyone could come down the stairs. They’ve both been busy lately though, so it’s impossible not to lean into Jeong-sik as he navigates around the couches and chairs joins him.

“You wanna get out of here?” Wonjae asks.

“Already?” Jeong-sik says.

“Don’t lie and tell me you actually wanna hang around and watch other people get drunk,” Wonjae says. Both of them can drink if they’re careful, but they’ve been trying to avoid it entirely. It helps, Wonjae thinks. It’s always interfered with his meds to some degree, and even when he wasn’t on meds it was easy for it to become a crutch. He feels better avoiding it.

“I’m good with leaving if you are,” Jeong-sik says.

His fingers graze along Wonjae’s lower back and he can feel the heat of them even through his t-shirt. He casts a look towards the stairs, then he grabs Jeong-sik’s jacket and tugs him back towards the door on the other side of the wet bar that probably leads to a bathroom. Jeong-sik leans down for a kiss just as he gets his hand on the handle and opens it only for Jeong-sik to yank back away from him hard as the sound of swearing and cursing comes from behind him.

Wonjae whirls around and freezes when he sees Woo Jiho of all people pinning Song Minho to the bathroom counter, lips at his throat.

“Uhhh…” Wonjae trails off, gaze flicking between Jiho and Minho. “It wasn’t. Locked.”

“No yeah, my bad,” Jiho says. He doesn’t move away from Minho at all, as if too stunned to consider it.

“It’s not a big deal,” Wonjae says. “Like…we…I’m…”

“Were you guys gonna go to the bathroom together?” Minho asks, then winces when Jiho knocks his forehead against his collarbone. “What?”

“This all is just one huge misunderstanding, I’m sure,” Jeong-sik says.

“Yup!” Jiho says, voice a little too high.

“We’re just gonna…leave,” Wonjae says, backing up out of the doorway and tugging Jeong-sik with him.

“Great, fantastic,” Jiho says.

The door slams shut and a moment later the lock clicks into place. Wonjae frowns at the door, feeling like his brain is clicking at a few paces too slow as he tries to process what had happened.

“I wanna say that I’m surprised, but now that I think about it for a second, I’m really not,” Jeong-sik says.

“Yeah, me neither,” Wonjae says as they walk back towards the stairs. He can’t help but think of what Jaebeom had said a while back about a friend of his and his boyfriend. It makes way more sense now. “Guess it’s a sign for us to go home instead though, huh?”

They end up catching a cab. It’s more expensive, but what’s the point of having extra money from his new album if he can’t spend it? He closes the screen between them and the driver and then sprawls out across the backseat so he can put his head on Jeong-sik’s lap, smiling up at the fond expression Jeong-sik gives him.

“You know, I talked to Jaebeom earlier tonight,” Jeong-sik says, rubbing his thumb over Wonjae’s brow bone. “The way he talks about you, if he weren’t the straightest man alive, I’d think he was in love with you.”

“Yeah?” Wonjae closes his eyes and thinks.

All the times he’s been around Jaebeom, he’s been pretty professional – as professional as one gets at AOMG anyways. He thinks about the ways he’s caught Jaebeom looking at him sometimes. It’s like the look from after his Zinza performance on SMTM. Wonjae has always ignored it when he’s felt it out of the corner of his eye, some part of him unwilling to meet his gaze when it was so knowing and intense like that.

“But like I said, he’s the straightest man alive,” Jeong-sik continues. “So it’s probably just some weird artist thing that he’s like…obsessed with you ‘realizing your vision’.”

“That’s what he said?” Wonjae asks.

“Yup, and a bunch of other stuff too, I don’t know, his Korean gets really bad when he’s drunk,” Jeong-sik says.

Wonjae doesn’t mention it, but the thought that Jaebeom is decidedly not the straightest man alive sits in his thoughts until he falls asleep that night.

-.-

The thing is, it’s not like signing with AOMG cured him. Sure, it got him access to better doctors, and having friends with healthy routines helps make his routines a little healthier too, but he still finds himself dogged by his depression. It rears its ugly head after the high of his album release wears off. He cancels an interview, buries himself under his blankets and cats and texts his friends. He doesn’t text Jeong-sik outside an explanation that he’s spiraling and won’t be easily reachable for a bit. Jeong-sik gets it. They don’t want to drag each other down with this. They know they can’t rely on each other.

Still. He wishes he could.

He wishes he could have a boyfriend he could rely on without being terrified that they’d become too attached to each other, too tangled up in each other’s needs to get away from each other. Jeong-sik isn’t Kiseok, but Wonjae is still himself. And he knows that he’s the one that’s the problem – he’s the one that wants to put himself back together using someone else’s problems. It’s not like that the depression talking either. It’s not self-loathing that makes him think that way, but logic. It’s how he’s behaved in the past. He knows himself. He refuses to drag someone down who struggles with the same issues as him.

It’s Sungwoo that shows up at his apartment, armed with music and a large coffee, and manages to drag him from his bed. He shoves the coffee into Wonjae’s hand, puts the music on the stereo, and then putters around the kitchen to find the cats’ plates and food while they do their best to twist around his ankles and trip him. It’s jazz music, but nothing he recognizes. On occasion, a voice floats in and out of the melody and he catches some English words but his brain is functioning far too slow to place them.

“She’s Japanese. The composer I mean,” Sungwoo says, then mimics Ami’s meow when she cries for food as he sets her plate down. “But this album is hmm…from the late 1990s? She was trying to break into the western market I think so she included English vocals.”

“Huh.” Wonjae sips at his coffee and watches Sungwoo start to clean his dishes. It’s absurd. He’s rich. He could pay someone to clean his shit, especially when his brain is too bad to do it himself. The thought of having someone he doesn’t know in his space when he’s like this makes him feel queasy, so he shoves that worry away and focuses on the music. “You working on something jazzy then?”

“Maybe,” Sungwoo says. “I have a few ideas, so I’ve been listening to a lot of different jazz. Some old classics too.”

“Nice.”

Sungwoo hums along with the melody as he finishes the dishes and then dries his hands with some paper towel before throwing it away. Wonjae hasn’t done the laundry recently. The towels are probably on a floor in the bathroom. Sungwoo steps in front of him and pries the coffee out of his hand as the woman on the track croons for her partner to keep dreaming.

“When’d you shower last?” Sungwoo asks.

“Uhhh…” Wonjae tugs his phone out of his pocket and checks his last message with Jeong-sik. “A week ago.”

“Alright, then get up,” Sungwoo says. “Go shower. I’m not your boyfriend so I’m not doing that part for you.”

“I wouldn’t let my boyfriend help me anyways,” he says.

Wonjae shuffles his way back down the hall to his bathroom with Namu trailing behind him. He doesn’t follow him into the bathroom though, just sits outside the door frame and yawns up at him when Wonjae stands there and stares at him. After a moment, he sticks his foot out and bops Namu on the nose with his toe before shutting the door and going to shower. His bathroom is bigger now, like the rest of his apartment. The water stays warm. He thinks about Byungjae rapping on stage about how he’s still not happy and scratches at his chest and arms and wishes he could have Jeong-sik here without risking poisoning him. He doesn’t want to be like Kiseok.

Once he’s clean, he changes back into a hoodie and shorts sitting on the bathroom counter that smell cleaner than the ones he was wearing and then heads back out. The washer hums in the kitchen. Sungwoo must have found what he needed to start it, and now he sits on Wonjae’s couch scrolling through his phone as a melancholy melody line from a tenor saxophone filters through the stereo speakers.

“What are you doing here anyways?” Wonjae asks. “Not to sound ungrateful.”

“It’s fine,” Sungwoo says. “I wanted to help. Why won’t you let your boyfriend help but you’ll let me?”

Wonjae collapses onto the couch next to him and rests his head on Sungwoo’s bony shoulder. “I don’t…” From here, he can see Sungwoo is reading an article about the jazz movement in Japan. “I don’t want to treat him the way Kiseok treated me.”

“Ah.” Sungwoo clicks his screen off and tosses his phone to the space beside him. “You know, I always thought it was weird the way you and Kiseok both insist you have to date people who are like you.”

“What do you mean?” Wonjae asks. “It’s…I know you and Sunghwa and Jaebeom and everyone else care but it’s…you don’t get it the way someone like me does.”

“And yet you won’t let the person who gets you anywhere near you when it’s at its worst,” Sungwoo says.

It’s not accusatory. He never is when it’s about something serious. It’s just an observation, but it hits Wonjae like cold water to the face and he stares across the living room at the wall. In his head, it never made sense that he’d ever date someone who isn’t like him. Someone who doesn’t have self-hatred that sits so deep that the only way to permanently remove it is to remove his very bones. It has never occurred to him that he could ever be with someone who isn’t like him.

It’s not that he thinks he deserves someone like himself. He doesn’t see Jeong-sik as worth less than someone free of depression or anxiety or panic disorders. He loves him. Or maybe…maybe he does feel that way? Maybe he’s only wanted to be with people like himself because the stakes are lower. Poisoning someone bright, someone healthy, someone who’s brain didn’t try to destroy them on a regular basis, that’s worse than hurting someone who’s already hurt. At least, it is if he thinks of it in terms of net suffering.

He’s suffered for so long, he doesn’t know how not to think of it in such a mathematical fashion. A world where he doesn’t wake up in the morning feeling dragged down doesn’t exist. Medication helps, therapy helps, but they just give him the tools to push through – the issues themselves never go away. People like him, people like Jeong-sik and Kiseok and Byungjae, they get used to it. The suffering is still suffering, but it’s not as if he could ruin their lives. He could make it worse, but the mental illness, the disorders, they’ve already ruined everything.

Even thinking that makes guilt roil in his stomach. How could he think of his friends, of people he loves, as ruined? But does ruined mean bad? Did they not have their innocence stolen at far too young an age? Why can’t he acknowledge the reality of being destroyed without attaching a measurement of worth to that? Can they not be ruined but still valuable? And if so, why is he more afraid of tainting someone untouched by the ravages of mental illness?

“I don’t think poorly of Jeong-sik,” Wonjae says, because he feels like that’s the most important thing he could say. “But I think…I’m afraid of ruining people I see as better than me.”

“You don’t see Jeong-sik as better than you?” Sungwoo asks.

“I do, but it’s…different,” Wonjae says. He shifts and draws his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. “I hate myself. I don’t think I’m worth anything, but I want to be worth something. I want to be worth something despite how flawed I am. I don’t hate Jeong-sik, and I think he’s worth the world even with all his flaws and the things he has to fight every day. But…I think…I think it’s worse if I ruin someone who’s happy than if I ruin someone who’s already sad…”

“Wonjae?” Sungwoo’s hand wraps around his wrist, prying his hand away from his other wrist where his nails had started to dig into his flesh. Angry red half-moon indents stare up at him.

“Am I a bad person?” Wonjae gasps out, suddenly painfully aware of how hot the tears on his cheeks are. “Sungwoo, am I really this bad that I…that I think that poorly of people I love?”

He feels like he can’t breathe, and he chokes out a noise as Sungwoo tugs him close, shushing him as he wraps an arm around Wonjae’s shoulders and rubs his shoulder and arm.

“It’s not that, I don’t think,” Sungwoo says as Wonjae clings to his other arm. “I don’t think those thoughts are a reflection of how you view Jeong-sik. I think they’re a reflection of how you view yourself.”

Logically, he can see the truth of Sungwoo’s words. It’s obvious that he doesn’t think poorly of Jeong-sik himself, he thinks poorly of his own self-loathing that he projects onto him. Even having that distinction, he can’t get rid of the guilt for thinking in such a way. He doesn’t think he wants to. Maybe if he feels guilty enough about it he can carve those thoughts out and replace it with something better.

“I can’t do this,” he whispers.

“Can’t do what?” Sungwoo asks.

“I can’t date him when I still…have all this,” Wonjae says. “It’s not fair to him.”

“I’m not going to make that decision for you,” Sungwoo says. “But I will say I don’t believe that shit about you can’t love others until you love yourself. You love Jeong-sik. Don’t break up with him if you think it’s because you don’t deserve him. And definitely don’t make any decisions when you’re upset.”

Wonjae shuts his eyes and leans harder into Sungwoo’s weight. Sungwoo squeezes his shoulder again as he rests his cheek on top of Wonjae’s head. He doesn’t let go until Wonjae does.

-.-

****

He breaks up with Jeong-sik before Christmas.

It hurts, the way Jeong-sik looks at him like he’s sad but not surprised, and it makes him wonder how long Jeong-sik has suspected it was coming. They lay together on Jeong-sik’s bed, close, entwined, the way they had been when Wonjae had asked him to date in the first place only a few months ago.

“I’m sorry,” Wonjae says.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Jeong-sik says. His fingers push through Wonjae’s hair, rubbing at his scalp as Wonjae listens to his heart beat a little fast where he rests his ear against Jeong-sik’s chest. “I know you still love me. Loving each other isn’t always enough for a relationship to work though.”

“I wish it was,” Wonjae says.

“We’re still friends though,” Jeong-sik says. “That’s the most important part.”

Wonjae doesn’t have a response for that, so instead he buries his face in Jeong-sik’s neck. He presses a kiss to Jeong-sik’s throat and wishes it could be different. 

-.-

**_Part Three_ **

****

**_I lost it when I learned about the tragedy of all of us_ **

**_I walked through the hallway to a room of only mirrors_ **

**_Reflecting me in bondage so I watched myself get freer_ **

**_-Small Red Boy, AJJ_ **

Jaebeom drags him, Kiseok, Sunghwa, Hyukwoo, and Myungjun to North America on a tour. Well, maybe drags isn’t the right word. Performing is still Wonjae’s favorite thing in the world to do, but it’s hard to be happy even as he stares out his hotel window at the Toronto skyline. The loss of his relationship with Jeong-sik is still a little too raw.

His phone chimes and he opens a message from Sungwoo that shows a picture of all three of his cats clambering all over his chest and face. It makes him smile. He should probably sleep because it’s one in the morning and he needs to try and get over the jet lag as fast as possible to make the small tour more enjoyable, but instead he finds himself lying in his bed scrolling through messages from friends and resisting the urge to go for a smoke.

_Byungjae: I have a few ideas for singles, but nothing coherent enough to call an album (Sent 1:17 AM)_

_I’m worried it won’t come to me (Sent 1:17 AM)_

_Wonjae: It will. Trust yourself. If you force it, it won’t be any good (Sent 1:25 AM)_

He gets back out of his bed and paces the small length of his room as he types his response to Byungjae. He looks over at his suitcase where he knows his cigarettes are and after one final moment of hesitation, gives in and opens it up, digging through the side pockets until he locates them. He’ll need to buy a new lighter though. Once he has his shoes on and a hoodie that’s three sizes too big, he heads down to the hotel lobby. It has one of those gift stores. A bored looking woman with neon pink hair doesn’t even look up from her phone as she scans the green Zippo lighter and he swipes his card to pay for it.

There’s a public ash tray a little ways away from the hotel entrance, the area lit by some orange streetlights. He shoves a cigarette between his lips, lights it, and then pulls out his phone as he takes the first drag and exhales out through his nose.

_Chloe: I know it’s late there, but I’m sending you some lyrics I wrote. I want your thoughts but no rush. Not sure if they’re capturing what I want (Sent 1:28 AM)_

_Wonjae: I’ll look them over tomorrow. We’re heading to New York right after the show (Sent 1:30 AM)_

_Chloe: Three whole days in NYC? I’m jealous :( take me with you next time (Sent 1:35 AM)_

Wonjae doesn’t mention that next time, she might actually get to come with them. Well, if Jaebeom gets what he wants. He’s been paying closer attention to Chloe since she featured on his album, and Wonjae knows he’s thinking about reaching out to her for a feature as well. In the meantime, she’s still releasing things on her SoundCloud. He’s not even sure why she wants his opinion on anything when she’s already a better artist than he is but he’s more than happy to help with what he can. He takes another drag and lets the hand holding the cigarette drop to his side.

_Kid Wonjae: Tell me to go home (Sent 1:39 AM)_

_I’ve been at the studio since…..too long (Sent 1:39 AM)_

_But I’m so closed to being done (Sent 1:39 AM)_

_But also I’m seeing double (Sent 1:39 AM)_

_Wonjae: Go home. Sleep for the both of us (Sent 1:40 AM)_

_Kid Wonjae: Ohhhh hard worker, how are you still up? Aren’t you in the states? (Sent 1:42 AM)_

_Wonjae: Can’t sleep. Jet lag (Sent 1:42 AM)_

_Kid Wonjae: I’ll sleep well for us both :D (Sent 1:42 AM)_

He smokes until the cigarette can’t be held anymore and tosses it in the tray, watching the embers die. It’s cool, he thinks, that his life has changed in in a way that he gets to connect with other artists. He thinks Byungjae was right about how things don’t really change with things like depression no matter how famous you get, but he’d like to think his pile of good things is higher than it would’ve been if he’d never taken a chance on music. It’s hard to even think that positively right now though. His phone chimes again.

_Kiseok: you awake? (Sent 1:54 AM)_

_Wonjae: Yeah. Outside (Sent 1:54 AM)_

_Kiseok: Sweet, I left my fucking cigarettes back home. Can I grab some from you (Sent 1:54 AM)_

_Wonjae: Cheapskate. Sure. I’m just outside the front door (Sent 1:55 AM)_

Kiseok comes out the hotel front door still zipping his jacket up, cursing under his breath at the cold before reaching a handout. Wonjae hands him a cigarette, then lights it for him before sliding the lighter away.

“Thanks,” Kiseok says. “I’ll buy you six packs of them when we get home. Can’t have you holding this above me.”

He says it as a tease and Wonjae rolls his eyes. “It’s fine. I know times are tough now that you aren’t a CEO anymore.”

“Oh come on.”

Wonjae laughs at the look Kiseok gives him and then leans back against the hotel wall before glancing up at the sky that’s still too dark to even call dawn. Kiseok’s breath is shaky as he exhales smoke.

“It’s bad timing,” Wonjae says. “My breakup and then coming here.”

“No, it’s perfect timing,” Kiseok says. “Now you can really let loose and fuck whoever you want while you’re in a country where no one recognizes you.”

“I’m trying not to solve my emotional problems that way anymore,” Wonjae says, tilting his head so he can look at Kiseok.

“Fair enough,” Kiseok says. “But don’t worry, the rest of us won’t let it get to you.”

And that is true. Jaebeom had even offered to let him back out of the tour when he’d heard the news, just one more example of all the times he’s been willing to put Wonjae above his own profits. That shouldn’t be revolutionary, but it is. For this this industry especially, but growing up the way he did, with parents working themselves to the bone, he knows it’s true wherever people end up for their career. He’s not sure what he’s done to deserve Jaebeom’s kindness.

“Do you think it’s wrong for you to date someone emotionally stable?” Wonjae asks. Maybe it’s too personal, especially with their shared history, but then what a better time to ask than in the dead of night in a foreign country.

“The fuck kind of question is that?” Kiseok asks, coughing around his own rough inhale.

Wonjae turns his gaze back up to the sky before Kiseok can look at him. “Sorry. It’s just…been on my mind.”

Kiseok sucks in a breath and then sighs, heavy and long. “I think…the other way. I want to date and love people who I can rely on, probably because I’m a leech or whatever else it was Sunghwa called me after you and I…yeah.”

“I already forgave you for that,” Wonjae says.

“Yeah, but I’m not sure I know how not to do that sort of thing to people,” Kiseok says. “So, to answer your question, no I don’t think it’s wrong for me to date someone emotionally stable. I just think it’s wrong for me to date really anyone right now.”

“Okay, yeah, good point,” Wonjae says.

“But…if I could date someone without being…terrible to them,” Kiseok says, tone slow as he seems to consider his words, like it’s painful to be so genuine and honest. “I don’t see what’s wrong with dating someone who’s in a better place mentally. That’s like saying I shouldn’t be friends with like, any of my friends.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I don’t know what answer you were looking for,” Kiseok says.

Wonjae shakes his head. “I don’t know either.”

He gives Kiseok another cigarette and his lighter before heading back inside. It’s stupid to think asking Kiseok questions will ever make things clearer. With the two of them, it’s like the blind leading the blind. At least with Jeong-sik, it felt like they were on the same wavelength when it came to really wanting to be better even if it’s not possible.

-.-

New York City is just like Seoul and nothing like it at the same time. It’s way more diverse, languages and faces and fashion he can’t even begin to place passing him by as he meanders his way down a side street in East Village with Jaebeom trailing behind him. He’d read an article about something called antifolk on the plane ride and the philosophy of it was something that resonated with him. Muse over musicality. Lyrics over popularity. Unrelenting honesty in the face of a world that didn’t care. It sounded like him, even if the style of music he’d found searching the internet wasn’t.

He’d brought up one of the antifolk venues to the others as a place he wanted to check out some night. A quick Google search had everyone saying they’d rather go somewhere else, so Wonjae had resigned himself to get there on his own to satisfy his curiosity. Jaebeom had opted to join him last minute. Going by his expression as they approach a blue-bricked building with a red awning, he’s starting to regret his decision.

“This place looks like shit,” he says in Korean as they enter the dingy bar.

“It’s rebellion,” Wonjae says.

“Rebellion of what? Health codes?” Jaebeom asks.

They navigate through the restaurant proper and enter the back room where the sound of music is coming from. The stage is pretty small, and the lighting isn’t that much better here either. The space is jam-packed though, leaving them to squeeze in along the back wall as the guitar player on stage starts yelling in a good-natured tone at someone in the crowd who yells back and sends a ripple of laughter through the space.

“The place is closing soon, like permanently,” Jaebeom says, lips pressed tight to Wonjae’s ear as the man begins to strum a hectic beat on his guitar. “That’s what I’m picking up from the conversations.”

Wonjae nods so Jaebeom knows he heard, then leans back against the wall and watches the crowd. He’s always been good at people watching. He likes it for one. He could sit in a park and watch people interact with each other all day and be fascinated by it. Here, in a foreign country when he can only pick out the occasional familiar word, it’s even more interesting. The familiarity between the people before them, the way they press to each other, pushing and pulling their way through the crowd as they find familiar faces and move is different from the crowds he’s used to.

The song reaches a noisy and chaotic finish before the man strums one last time and his guitar string breaks, lashing across his arm and making blood spray on the stage even as he and the crowd laughs. There’s a yell from the crowd and the man shouts back again even as he smiles and hands his guitar off to someone else before hopping off stage. Someone passes him a towel as he heads off towards the bathrooms.

A trio of women perform next, a set of two songs that seems to use a call and response with the crowd with one woman on keys and another on an acoustic guitar. That’s followed by a duo, a man and a woman, with the woman on guitar and the man on what Jaebeom tells him is a Theremin. The sound it makes is…interesting. He thinks he’ll have to get one for himself. Throughout all the performances, there seems to be an easy dialogue between the performers and the crowd. The performers, upon finishing, blend back in with the audience and it makes the space feel less like a concert and more like a huge group of friends hanging out together.

A moment later, a woman steps onto the stage and begins to talk to the crowd, the cadence of her voice easy and echoing the same familiarity he’s seen in the way the crowd moves around each other. As she talks, another man steps on stage behind her and begins to move mics around and another comes up with an upright bass, setting it to her left before disappearing back into the crowd and returning with a guitar which he hands to the other man.

The woman gestures at the two as they step up to their mics and then hops off the stage as the crowd cheers. The man says a few words and the crowd goes silent immediately after. He begins to strum on his guitar then before he begins to sing, his voice a high and wavering timbre that seems strained in the sudden and deathly silence of the room. Jaebeom presses closer again, his voice a whisper when he speaks.

“It’s a song he wrote here,” he says. “It seems everyone knows the lyrics too.”

Wonjae nods his understanding, but Jaebeom doesn’t stop there. As the man sings, Jaebeom translates against his ear, spinning a tale of a man carving out a devil from his insides and raising him with gentle care. The man on the upright bass carves a deep thrum through the air as the crowd suddenly shouts out a few of the lyrics, nearly drowning out Jaebeom’s words in the process.

There’s something in the air as the song progresses, the crowd moving together as they shout the lyrics back towards him. The singer pulls away as he continues to strum, the tears on his face obvious as they reach the climax of the song, but the crowd continues to sing through for him without missing a beat. He finds himself entranced by the way the man so fearlessly lets the crowd carry the melody for him until he can step forward and begin to join them once more. He knows no one in the room, doesn’t even speak their language, and yet he feels as if the sorrow and subsequent joy of being accepted in that sorrow is something everyone in the room is feeling at once.

He thinks of what Chaegi told him nearly two years ago. That the ones who care about the emotion he puts into his music, those are the ones who will stay silent, but he thinks now that Chaegi was wrong. The ones who care will catch him like this too. The crowd responds, carries the man’s voice until he’s able to resume himself. The performance is not merely artist and audience. Instead, they perform together. They rely on each other.

The audience cheers out the last line of the song together and then it comes to an abrupt end as the man closes his eyes as the crowd cheers, hooting and clapping and stomping their feet. After a moment, the man seems to regain his composure yet again, giving a few more words, one which sounds like a thank you. Wonjae nudges Jaebeom’s side before jerking his chin towards the exit. He’s seen what he wanted, he thinks.

Exiting onto the street, it’s as if a string has been cut. It’s as if the last song had somehow tied him to a room of strangers and he feels bereft now that he’s suddenly cut off from that energy. When he looks at Jaebeom as they both stand on the sidewalk in the crisp winter air, he’s not sure what he expects to see. It’s hard to match up the Jaebeom from their first silent meeting to the Jaebeom that gets drunk and raps on stage about pussy and he’s not sure which he’s going to get when he looks at him. Is he going to get the one who accepted the burden of someone’s emotions with grace or the one that laughed out of nerves?

“That was fucking intense, the lyrics man,” Jaebeom says. He laughs then, but it’s not the nervous laughter of someone who’s uncomfortable, but delighted. “Like don’t get me wrong, none of that was my style of music, but that shit was an _experience_.”

“Yeah?” Wonjae asks.

Jaebeom looks at him, frowning. “Well, yeah. Did you not actually like it?”

“No, I did,” Wonjae says. “I’m just surprised you did too.”

“It’s not about the music,” Jaebeom says with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Performances like that, it’s about that connection, right, that an artist can make with their audience. Most people are too chicken shit to do that.” He pauses and then smiles. “I mean, it’s what drew me to you in the first place. Not to sell that guy short, but everyone in there knew him, right? So it’s gut-wrenching and shit, but with you, you go on stage never knowing if the people there are gonna respond well, and then you own your lyrics anyways. I…I love that.”

Wonjae thinks of what Jeong-sik had told him a few months ago. About how when he gets going, Jaebeom talks about him like he’s in love.

“You mean it, don’t you?” Wonjae asks. “I could never make you a dime and you wouldn’t care.”

Jaebeom looks like he’s been caught off guard, but then he nods. “Yeah. I meant it. Maybe it sounds dumb but like…what happened in there, the way everyone was there for him when he was performing, and he needed help. I want AOMG to be that for you. That’s all I’ve wanted since I first saw you perform.”

“I’m nothing special,” Wonjae says. He doesn’t even mean it in a self-deprecating way, he just doesn’t see how he’s any different from the man playing to a local crowd in a dive bar in NYC, or Byungjae back when he played shows with a crowd smaller than someone could count on their hand. “I can’t help you.”

“Watching you perform helps me,” Jaebeom says. “Performing with you does too. It’s…fuck dude, you just have that effect on me, I don’t know. You always have. You’ve always seemed special to me.”

The words are troubling to hear in a way he’s sure Jaebeom isn’t aware of. They make him think of what Sunghwa had said about making sure he wasn’t being used as someone else’s stepping stool. Does Jaebeom just see him as…someone to learn from? He’s not depressed or anything like Kiseok, but he hides his bisexuality under one of the most convincing lies in the world. The type of honesty Wonjae has would be alluring to someone with a secret like that.

“Did I say the wrong thing?” Jaebeom asks.

Wonjae shakes his head. “I’m just…thinking. You think really highly of me. Like…really highly.”

“Yeah,” Jaebeom says, brow furrowing. “Of course I do. I think highly of all my friends.”

“You wouldn’t let them not make you any money though,” Wonjae says.

“I…” Jaebeom stops and seems to think it over. “I feel like you are testing me and it’s kind of pissing me off if I’m honest because I don’t know what kind of answer is the right one and I’d prefer to just answer truthfully without worrying about failing.”

Wonjae swallows hard and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Sorry. I sort of am. I guess I’m just not like…it’s hard to be honest with you when we’re talking like this.”

“Why?” Jaebeom asks.

Wonjae starts walking back towards the subway station they had come from as he thinks of the right words to say. After watching a stranger cry on stage during a performance, he thinks maybe the least he can do is find the strength somewhere in him to be honest about his fears about the way Jaebeom treats him. They walk past a whole host of noisy bars and drunk party goers.

“I think…I’m worried that you see my vulnerability on stage and you’re more concerned about what you can learn from it instead of appreciating me as a whole person,” Wonjae says. “Which is weird, because sometimes you look at me like you understand me better than anyone else I’ve ever met and that freaks me out sometimes too, and it makes me feel even more nervous about if you really see me as a person or just an artist to emotionally benefit off of. And it’s even worse because…because you don’t _actually_ know me like that. There are things about myself I haven’t shared with you and I don’t think you’d like them or look at me like that if you knew.”

He can’t bring himself to look at Jaebeom as he speaks, but he feels better with his concerns from the last year and a half off his chest. Jaebeom, to his credit, doesn’t respond right away. They walk side by side together, with Wonjae occasionally checking his phone to make sure they’re still going the right way before they continue on. It isn’t until they’re settling into their seats on the subway, far from anyone else, that Jaebeom speaks.

“I don’t think there’s much of anything you could show me that would make me look at you in a bad light,” Jaebeom says. “I’m sorry I made you feel like I was I don’t know…putting you on a pedestal or something? I do admire you, like, a lot, and I’m not gonna sit here and lie and pretend that I don’t. But I don’t see you as someone for me to use, not monetarily, not emotionally, not in whatever other way you could possibly come up with. I…I’m just grateful I can give you space to figure yourself out. And I hope I can be as comfortable with like…liking…dudes or whatever the way you are one day but that’s honestly at the bottom of my list of things I think about when I think about you.”

“It’s hard to think that someone could be that selfless,” Wonjae says, leaning forward on his knees and then turning his head to look at Jaebeom.

“I’m not really selfless,” Jaebeom says. “Wanting to help isn’t being selfless, it’s just being a decent human. When I first fucked like, everything up? Like _everything_ , and spent fucking weeks just crying my eyes out in my childhood bedroom because it felt like everyone hated my guts, I had people that cared, but I didn’t have anyone who could provide me with like…a real safety net you know?”

Wonjae nods, urging him to continue. It’s not often that Jaebeom opens up to him in conversation and becomes truly candid. He wonders if it’s like how he feels about Byungjae sometimes, like he has to walk a line between being honest and not burdening Byungjae with things he has no business carrying. It’s nice that Jaebeom respects him that way.

“So now that I have AOMG and I have this like, platform, where I can bring people in and help them make music the way they want to when other labels won’t let them, I think it’s sort of like…I want to be for other people what I needed back then,” Jaebeom says. “Of course you could make music on your own. So could Sungwoo and Kiseok and Sunghwa and literally every single person I’ve signed to AOMG, but it’s easier when you all have someone to rely on right?”

“Yeah, it is,” Wonjae says. “I didn’t realize you thought about it that deeply.”

Jaebeom smiles at that, rolling his eyes a little before nudging Wonjae with his elbow. “Yeah, well that’s part of the deal right? I can’t have everyone knowing I’m a fucking sap.”

“It makes me feel better though, knowing everything you just said,” Wonjae says. “It makes me feel safer I guess? Like you won’t one day shove me out the door because I’m a fucking mess.”

“I don’t think you’re a fucking mess,” Jaebeom says. “But I guess that has to do something with the parts of yourself you want to hide from me, right?”

Wonjae nods. “Yeah.”

“Well…don’t,” Jaebeom says with a firm nod. “I don’t mind hearing. You’re friends with everyone else, aren’t you? I…wouldn’t mind also being your friend.”

The buzzing and bright lights of the subway car make it easy to see that Jaebeom’s blushing, high and deep in his cheeks. He doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t want to risk, for even a moment, Jaebeom thinking that Wonjae finds his genuine emotional responses as something to laugh at. Not after tonight.

“Thanks for coming with me,” Wonjae says.

“Thanks for trusting me to come with you.”

-.-

Something changes after that night. It’s like they’d spent a year with Jaebeom one page ahead of where Wonjae is, and now, finally, they’re in step with each other. It’s like that one conversation has realigned their interactions with each other and Wonjae finds himself able to truly relax in his presence. Even if he doesn’t immediately dump everything on him the way he does on Sungwoo, but he doesn’t hesitate to mention his feelings the way he used to. Every time he does, Jaebeom looks surprised but he doesn’t make a big deal of it. It makes it easier to do it again. And again.

He starts meeting back up with Jeong-sik as the months press on into the end of winter. It’s tentative. Their friendship feels fragile now. Their history sits between them manifesting like a physical distance that he can tell they both want to overcome but aren’t sure how. He spends too much time thinking about how Jeong-sik had been able to soothe something that had caused him pain. It makes him wonder why in those moments he’d been willing to be open and vulnerable and let Jeong-sik try to help but when it came to something like a depressive episode, he pushed him away.

He thinks if he finds the answer to that question, maybe he can figure out how to stop projecting his self-hatred onto the people he cares about.

“Or, maybe you could just not have self-hatred,” Jaebeom says.

They’re at Jaebeom’s, Wonjae stretched out on the couch while Jaebeom finishes putting away their dinner leftovers in the fridge. Wonjae will have to grab his on his way out. If he even leaves. He’s been taking to hopping around and staying with different people to try and stave off the impending depressive spiral he can feel lurking in the back of his ribs. After seeing the show in New York, he’s made a more conscious effort to reach out when he’s felt bad, testing his friends with more and more of the parts of himself he tries to hide the way Sungwoo and Sunghwa both had encouraged him to.

So far, none of them have let him down, but it’s still hard to trust.

“How do I do that?” Wonjae asks.

“Just. Stop it,” Jaebeom says, but his tone is light, a clear sign he’s joking. “I mean honestly, I don’t actually know. I guess because when I look at you I don’t see what it is that I’m supposed to hate in the first place.”

Jaebeom steps around the couch and Wonjae almost moves, but Jaebeom just sits down on the ground in front of Wonjae’s upper body, fumbling with the stereo remote. After a few buttons, some sort of vaguely familiar R&B music begins to play, soft and deep.

“I…” Wonjae thinks about the poisonous feeling that he feels in his blood, in his bones, always there even when it recedes enough that he can sometimes feel like he’s normal for a few hours. It’s the thing that made him unhappy when he was a child, and yet when he expressed that unhappiness, he’d been looked at as if he were strange. What sort of kid wanted to die? “I don’t know. It’s like I’ve always had something in me that’s made people look at me like I’m a freak.”

“Honesty freaks people out,” Jaebeom says. His thumbs tap against his knee to the beat of the music.

“It’s not that,” Wonjae says with a shake of his head before turning his gaze up to Jaebeom’s apartment ceiling. “It’s the thing I’m being honest about. It’s…when you were a kid, did you ever wanna fucking kill yourself?”

He gets silence in response and Wonjae feels his gut curdle. That’s it, isn’t it? The thing that makes him so fucking weird and strange and broken. The thing that made him go still in the middle of class and think that it would be nice if he could just cease to exist because he was so tired of being so sad for no reason.

“No. I never did,” Jaebeom says. “Not even after the shit with 2PM. I never felt that kind of sorrow or pain ever.”

“Yeah, because it’s fucking gross. Only…only someone with something bad in them would feel like that,” Wonjae says. He shifts, hand going instinctively to rub at his chest. “That’s what I mean. There’s something in me that’s poisoned me and I don’t know how to get it out, or if it’ll ever get out of me, or if I’m just doomed to have it slowly kill me and everyone else I’m around. That’s…that’s why I hate myself.”

Jaebeom’s silence doesn’t hurt this time. He knows it’s because Jaebeom is thinking over his words, trying to give them the proper respect and response instead of just going with his first thought. It’s a level of care he feels like he doesn’t deserve. It feels like…

“I’m not trying to make you my therapist,” Wonjae says.

“I’m not trying to be your therapist,” Jaebeom says. “I’m trying to be your friend. If you make me uncomfortable, I’ll tell you, but just go ahead and assume that unless I say something, I’m good. And for the record, I am fucking sad as shit to hear you felt that way when you were a kid, like…I can’t even fucking imagine what that would feel like. But I don’t think that means there’s something about you that is worth hating. That level of helplessness. That’s not a choice. I’m not gonna hate you for shit that’s not your choice and I wish you didn’t hate yourself for it either.”

Wonjae shifts, letting his hand drop down to touch Jaebeom’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze so he has something to do other than scratch at himself. Jaebeom startles at first before relaxing again. “Remember when you guys had me and Ignito go against each other?”

“Yeah,” Jaebeom says.

“He said…that people laugh at people like me when we’re on stage because they don’t know what to do with how what I say makes them feel,” Wonjae says. “And he’s not wrong, and I think that it like…reinforces what I thought about myself as a kid? Because back then it was people acting horrified or disgusted, and then when I performed and showed my lyrics and shit, people _did_ laugh. But…Sunghwa didn’t. And neither did Hyukwoo, or you.”

It’s not exactly clear what he’s trying to say but Jaebeom looks over his shoulder, head knocking back against the couch seat so he can look at Wonjae properly. He’s got that look in his eyes again, the one that says he’s reading between the lines.

“I know it’s hard to trust me not to hate you or laugh at you when you say stuff about how you feel,” Jaebeom says. “So thank you for doing it anyways.”

Wonjae swallows hard and ignores the way his eyes burn with tears. Jaebeom pats his hand and then changes the song.

-.-

“Jeong-sik? As in ex-boyfriend Jeong-sik?” Sunghwa asks.

“I thought he was with Tiger JK’s label,” Kiseok adds.

“He was, his contract is up in a month,” Wonjae says, leaning back in his booth seat as he fiddles with an empty soju bottle on the table.

The club Kiseok dragged them too is still loud but he’s just glad they don’t have to shout to hear each other. It’s a Tuesday night so it’s not that crowded, the usual fans that would flock to them having already cleared out after they got a chance to snag a photo before they retreated to a booth above the dance floor. Wonjae watches people dance below.

“Did he not wanna renew it or did they show him the door?” Kiseok asks.

“Don’t know,” Wonjae says.

“Well at least he told you he was going to try out for the show before just showing up and taking you by surprise,” Sunghwa says.

“He wouldn’t do that,” Wonjae says.

Jaebeom’s latest idea of having an audition program hadn’t been Wonjae’s favorite. He’d actually done his best to wiggle out of being a judge, but between Jaebeom and Sungwoo tag-teaming him with cajoling and begging he’d finally agreed. He just feels like his own career is still too new for him to be judging anyone. It’s different for people like Sungwoo who while new to the AOMG label have been active for years, or Jaebeom who’s been in the industry for over a decade.

“How are you even gonna judge your ex fairly?” Kiseok asks.

Wonjae looks back at him. “I mean, should I really be judging anyone at this point?”

Sunghwa kicks his leg under the table. “Cut that self-deprecating shit out. I’m not gonna listen to it.”

Wonjae opens his mouth to respond, yelping when Sunghwa gives him another kick before he can even speak.

“And before you even try, no you are not being objective or logical, you can produce your own beats and write your own lyrics just fine,” Sunghwa says with a shake of his head. “You’re perfectly capable of judging other people’s music.”

“Isn’t he annoying?” Kiseok asks in a fake whisper as he leans into Wonjae’s space. “He doesn’t let us get away with anything these days.”

Wonjae snorts and shakes his head. “He’s right, we’re just stubborn fucks.”

“Back to the point,” Sunghwa says before Kiseok can say anything else. “Are you sure it’s not gonna be weird?”

Wonjae looks away from the crowd to look back at him. “Nah. He’s gonna do well or he’s not. He gets that it’s just business, and 80% is gonna be whatever is good for ratings.”

It reminds him of something Byungjae had asked him shortly after his stint on High School Rapper. He’d asked if people like them would ever be allowed to win anything. Wonjae hadn’t known how to answer then, but he thinks he has a better idea now, especially as he thinks about Jeong-sik. Even with Jaebeom’s influence, the main networks wouldn’t want to show someone like them finding that sort of success, not when it could send a positive message about something they still tried to shame people into being silent about.

The very thing the networks profited off were the same things they wanted to shame and silence. They were stuck forever trying to walk the narrow line between the two. At the end of the day, Jaebeom wouldn’t sign anyone to his label he didn’t want there, but even if Jeong-sik is the top contender, Wonjae finds it hard to imagine Jeong-sik being allowed to make it to the final round.

“Just don’t look at him like your normally do,” Kiseok says, grabbing at the ash tray on the table and dragging it closer as he fishes his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket.

“What does that mean?” Wonjae asks with another short laugh.

“You always look at him like he’s your whole world,” Kiseok says, cigarette bobbing between his lips as he struggles to light it given his lack of coordination.

Sunghwa sighs and reaches out to do it for him, pushing Kiseok’s face away when Kiseok smiles at him around the cigarette. He blows the smoke out up towards the ceiling. Wonjae watches it spiral away into nothing and contemplates whether or not he’ll regret getting completely smashed tonight if he decides to do that.

“No matter who else comes into my life, he’s always gonna be the one who understood me first, like, really understood me,” Wonjae says, but he’s not sure who he’s saying it for. When he looks back at them, both Kiseok and Sunghwa stare at him with curious expressions. “He’s always gonna be special to me. That’s all.”

“Hey, it’s like you and-“ Kiseok starts, then coughs up smoke when Sunghwa kicks him hard under the table.

“That is none of anyone’s business,” Sunghwa says with a too pleasant smile on his face.

“Is this about you and Jaebeom?” Wonjae asks.

“It is but as I said before, if he wants to tell you that story, it’s his call, not mine, and certainly not yours,” Sunghwa says with a pointed look at Kiseok.

“I feel like it’s really obvious now,” Wonjae says with a bit of a smile as he puts the pieces together in his head.

Sunghwa winces and grabs one of the near empty glasses of beer and knocks back the rest of it as if that will somehow erase a bad memory. “No, I promise, it’s so much worse than whatever you’re thinking.”

Kiseok nods and exhales more smoke before tapping ash off in the tray. “Sunghwa was a huge asshole back in the day.”

“Okay, now you’re making it sound worse than what it actually is,” Sunghwa says, voice slipping into a whine.

“I’m going home,” Wonjae says, grinning when both of them start to protest.

He lets them cajole him back down for another drink and smoke and tires not to think too hard about Jaebeom and Sunghwa’s history.

-.-

Being on a show with Jeong-sik again isn’t nearly as stressful as Wonjae had thought it would be. They’ve had time for their friendship to start feeling like friends again, so despite Kiseok’s teasing, he doesn’t have any issues trying to hide his feelings. It’s almost comforting to know that things have settled so smoothly between them. The only real downside is that they agreed not to talk to each other outside taping until it was all done with, if only to help Wonjae keep his head.

“How do you do it?”

Wonjae curses, jerking away from the alleyway door as Jaebeom steps through it. He grins at Wonjae when he sees him.

“Damn, didn’t mean to scare you,” Jaebeom says.

Taping for the day is over for the most part – going by his lack of a mic Jaebeom must be done with the wrap up interviews like him and Sungwoo.

“It’s fine,” Wonjae says. “I was just getting some air. I was gonna go home with Sunghwa when he finished because I…yeah I don’t wanna be myself that’s all. But what did you mean? How do I do what?”

“Oh! Like…” Jaebeom moves to stand next to him, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking up at the sky the way Wonjae had been. Wonjae swallows and does the same. “How do you just act like you and Jeong-sik aren’t…what you were?”

Wonjae thinks he gets what Jaebeom had meant went they were in New York now. It feels like he’s being tested. He glances at Jaebeom’s face out of the corner of his eye, but it remains painfully neutral, the kind of expression that seems to be deliberately blank.

“I think…it’s because we were really important to each other, and we are, but it’s kinda like…we’ve always loved each other the way friends do, it just turned into something more because it was safer to try it together?” Wonjae pauses. “Sorry, I’ve never really thought that hard about it, but now that I do think it’s less that we were attracted to each other and more that we were attracted to like uh…”

“Safety,” Jaebeom says with a nod. “You were safe for each other.”

“Yeah,” Wonjae says. “And I needed safe after Kiseok. And…dating someone who isn’t like as depressed as me doesn’t feel very safe either.”

“Why not?” Jaebeom asks, turning to look at him.

Wonjae shrugs, shoulders coming up high before he slumps back against the wall and looks down. “I haven’t quite figured that out. I thought it was me just projecting my self hatred onto other people but now I think…maybe it’s like…I’m not gonna let someone down who understands how fucked up I am right?”

“I don’t have depression but I can’t imagine ever feeling like you’d let me down because you have an episode,” Jaebeom says. “I haven’t yet, have I?”

“I guess not,” Wonjae says. He glances back at Jaebeom. “But also we’re not dating and last I checked, you prefer women.”

Jaebeom’s lips twisted into something between a wince and disgust. “I did say that didn’t I?”

“Yup. And it would still be okay if you preferred men,” Wonjae says. He had laughed before when they’d had this conversation, but things are different between them now and he can’t imagine even poking fun with good intentions. Jaebeom has proven he can be trusted with Wonjae’s dark thoughts. He wants…he wants Jaebeom to trust him with the same, even if it’s not on the same scale. “Sunghwa said it’s his fault that you like…I don’t know…”

“Try to be like aggressively straight?” Jaebeom asks.

“Uh yeah. Maybe not how I’d phrase it, but yeah,” Wonjae says.

“We’re not having this conversation here,” Jaebeom says.

Wonjae gets why. Mics or not, it’s still a television studio’s property, and such conversations are probably best not had there. “I do have one question that’s like…not as relevant.”

Jaebeom tilts his head to the side. “Oh yeah?”

“That friend you mentioned before? The one you were afraid of sounding like?” Wonjae hurries ahead when Jaebeom’s eyes narrow. “Was that by chance two people who may or may not have been on season 4 of SMTM?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. How did…oh. The party. I told them not to do shit like that!” Jaebeom says, his voice coming out as a whine as he runs a hand down in his face in a fashion that seems far too dramatic. “Those two are so fucking…it’s a fucking miracle no one has found out, swear to God.”

“I want that story later,” Wonjae says. “You can even tell me that one before your own if you want. Well, at least your role in it.”

“My role was small and insignificant,” Jaebeom says. “Honestly, I wasn’t even given the dirty details of their high school drama, but I can definitely tell you about my involvement some time.”

“We’ll work up to your dark stories eventually,” Wonjae says with an overly serious nod.

Jaebeom shoves him then, but he’s laughing, so Wonjae feels quite alright.

-.-

Jeong-sik gets eliminated and Sohee wins. Chloe enters serious talks about joining AOMG which makes him happy too. He likes to watch the way Jaebeom takes people onto the label and gives them resources to do what they want. There’s not much he has in common with Sohee or Chloe really, but he hopes things work out with them. Watching Jaebeom work towards giving them the same foundation he’d given him two years ago, Wonjae feels like maybe understands Jaebeom a little more. He wants to give people that he didn’t have when he started his label. He wants to give people what he wants to give Byungjae.

He wonders if that’s what healing is supposed to be.

He wonders that up until one early fall morning when he wakes up and realizes he doesn’t want to move. The depressive spiral he’d worked so hard to avoid snuck up on him in the night. Busy during the day, working on new songs, features, tapings, filling up the days until he collapses into exhaustion. Bouncing from friend’s house to friend’s house and filling up his time with their presence is just a coping mechanism not a cure. He forgets sometimes. And then this happens.

The day slips away after he texts a few people he’ll be offline for a while. He shuts his phone off and pulls the covers over his head as Namu wiggles up under the covers to rest against his stomach and shuts his eyes. It’s not to sleep. If he does drift off, that’s even better, but usually sleep evades him the more he craves it.

He finds himself thinking of his conversation with Sungwoo about whether he feels he deserves to date someone who is mentally well. He thinks that maybe that’s the wrong question. The more he considers the reason he hates himself as Namu purrs against his stomach, the more he wonders if he even does hate himself. He’s never seen the thing that makes him damaged as something he is. It’s always been something else, something dark, sometimes like thorns, sometimes like oil. Sometimes he rips it out and sometimes it drains out like an infection from a cut. But it’s never been…himself…that he hated.

Not really.

Was it all in his head? Well, of course it was. There’s nothing actually inside him. There’s no tumor that sits at the bottom of his ribcage that spreads its tendrils through his veins and bones and drags him down with exhaustion and sadness, but sometimes he feels it like a physical presence. It’s not a delusion, not really. More like…a manifestation. Something he tricked himself into thinking was there, perhaps as a child. Perhaps when the first person looked at him in shock when he said he wanted to stop existing. It’s easier, he thinks, for a child to think there’s something inside them that’s wrong than to think it’s them that’s the problem. A child couldn’t process what a mental illness was. But a poison? That would make sense.

So that means what? He hates his child self for coming up with a coping mechanism that’s left him so terrified of poisoning others that he avoids anyone who he thinks has too much to lose? Anyone who doesn’t have the same thing gnawing on their insides? There’s no hate he can have for whatever his brain had come up with in childhood to try and avoid feeling suicidal. But perhaps…perhaps there’s no need to cling to that belief. He’s damaged. And broken. And his brain isn’t working right and can’t make the right chemicals and fire the right neurons. The trauma of loneliness isn’t something he can fully erase and he knows the echo will always be there.

But he’s not poisoned. He just…has a mental illness and whatever baggage comes with that. He thinks of his lyrics, of how many times he’s screamed for people to stop looking at him like he’s strange and give him comfort instead. It’s obvious now. The way reality has been staring him in the face this whole time and he’s just been unable to consciously grasp it. He’s not tainted. He’s not going to ruin anyone who helps him. He just needs comfort…but no, that’s not quite right either.

He doesn’t _need_ it.

He can survive without it. He can survive with nothing but himself and his music and performing, even if it’s just to a crowd of one. As long as he has something to create and perform, he’ll survive just fine.

But he _wants_ it.

He wants comfort. He wants to stop running from being loved. The only reason he’s tried to avoid it and only accepted it when it’s been shoved upon him is because he’s been scared of ruining people. At least when they showed up at his door and refused to leave, he could blame them for the choice. They were the ones taking the risk. But…there is no risk. He knows that, at least for now, in this moment. He knows such revelations can be tenuous and slip away if he’s not careful.

He pats Namu’s head and turns his phone back on.

_Wonjae: hey. I think I want some help. I don’t want to be alone right now (Sent 2:32 PM)_

Namu makes a noise of protest as Wonjae hauls him up closer to his chest and kisses the back of his head. His phone buzzes a moment later.

_Jaebeom: sure man. What’s your address again? Gotta wrap up this meeting but I’ll try to be by after like, idk, 4? (Sent 2:33 PM)_

_Wonjae: yeah that’s fine. Thanks (Sent 2:35 PM)_

_Jaebeom: Of course (Sent 2:35 PM)_


End file.
